Services provided
3D Character Creation and Rigging- Character Animation
Tasks in numbers
- conceptual design of the main characters for the Ankh series
- 35 different character and animal models
- 180 character animations
We already started working for Deck13 Interactive in the preproduction phase for their first commercial adventure game project “Ankh” in 2004. As the look of the main characters for the Ankh prototype was not set at that time, we were tasked with creating concepts for the graphics style of the main characters.
After the concepts were accepted by the customer, we created all three characters for the prototype version of Ankh, rigged them and created the set of the 35 animations that would give the cast their specific personalities. This prototype was presented by our client Deck13 to publishers at the Games Convention 2004 – in fact very successfully, as Ankh became one of the most popular adventure game franchises ever developed in Germany.
Later on we were also involved in the development of the full version of the first Ankh game, as well as in the creation of characters and animations for the second and third Ankh game (“Ankh: Heart of Osiris” in 2006 and “Ankh: Battle of the Gods” in 2007).
We were also very happy to help Deck13 with providing 23 different characters and 35 animations for their award winning adventure game “Jack Keane”.
Since the beginning of development of their first Ankh title Deck13 was continuously using the Ogre technology for their game engine. However the animation system was changed to CAT Toolkit in 2006 (instead of using the Character Studio Biped) – we have adapted to this change in the animation pipeline quickly and delivered the animations to our client directly in CAT file format.
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After “Jack Keane” was finished we were also tasked with modeling and texturing of the main characters for the prototype versions of Deck13’s next game titles “Haunted” and “Venetica”.
Testimonial
We were impressed with the work Rocketbox delivered with creating and texturing some of the most important characters for Jack Keane and Ankh, along with a host of outstanding animations. Rocketbox is a studio we love working together with and which we can highly recommend without any reservation.
Jan Klose, Creative Director Deck13 Interactive
Press comments
The 3D characters are colorful, stylized, and very expressive. You can almost always tell how a character is feeling simply by looking at them.
gamezebo.com on Jack KeaneThe look and sound of the game are equally charismatic. The visuals are cartoon-style, with big-eyed, big-headed characters that wouldn't be out of place on Saturday-morning TV.
gamespot.com on Ankh
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