Slot games, such as Gonzo’s Quest, Wolverine and Jack and the Beanstalk are slot games that feature animated characters, besides the reels and 3D visuals. 3D has become more prevalent in both Hollywood world and casino world. Since the 3D visuals are made by 3D animators, let’s see how is the life of a 3D Slot Animator.
Job and Experience
An animator learns the skills of animating by studying an animation major. There are many animations schools in the world and most of them help students learn the basics, have long hours of drawing human anatomy, classes split into an animation project, hours of learning digital techniques and so on. Getting into an animation major requires well formed drawing skills and the ability to know minimal digital techniques.
For example, in order to apply to Animation Workshop, in Denmark, future students can either apply to their Classical Drawing semester, to learn the basics or improve the traditional drawing skills. Or, they can create a blog, with a few examples of human anatomy drawings, basic character moves, and basic video animation. The school offers three different majors, one in comics, one in computer graphics and one in animation. The teachers giveaway projects to their classes and the two majors, computer graphics and animation, team up for the given project. Later their bachelor movie, made by both computer graphic artists and animators are shown to a potential company that will hire these students in form of internships.
Phases of Slot Creations
In an iGaming company, an 3D animator will experiment different characters and art styles. Their primary job is to create animations and poses for various slots that the company is developing. When it comes to 3D models there is an 3D model artists, a slot game needs to be out quickly as possible so animations intro are outsourced. They are only necessary if the managements wishes so.
In general, the design of all artworks for mobile, web or online slots can be divided in various sections. Everything starts with gathering available materials that can be provided by a client, game design document, technical requirements, asset list, references to style and quality. After that, a colour palette is chosen according to industry standards. Then, the creation of an concept art, from designing slot symbols, items, assets, background and wireframe. Animations are added for items, reels, anticipators, lines etc.
The ideas of creating a slot game is mixed in the team. Every slot has a designer and decides the theme. The animator is working closely to the designer in order to share the same vision for the theme. If the designer wants something more cartoonish and goofy, the animator can’t really come with animation that is realistic and fluid.
The process time for completing an animation for a slot depends on the requirements. Sometimes all it is needed is a few poses, a title screen and some symbols, which can take a couple of days. When there are more complex animations, it can take up to a month. Typically, slots are quick to made so their projects doesn’t take more than a month of two, from conception to finished state.
Working as an animator for a movie studio or an advertisement company is harder than working on a slot game. Animations in slot games are considered easy to make, it’s fun, stable and it allows the animator to experiment with various characters and styles.
Not every project on a slot will end up in the app store. Some projects can be scrapped in the last seconds because of technical agreement. If you feel like observing the work, animations and characters of a slot game, login into an online casino and playing some virtual slots will give you an idea of how the game was made.