EA Insider report delves into the gruelling work on character animation

This week`s EA Insider comes directly from the heart of the Bond development studio, where Animation Directors Stephen Weston and David Rader drink lots of coffee while creating amazingly realistic animations for the James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing.

The animators work on NIS (non-interactive sequences), NPCs (non-player controlled characters), and hand-to-hand animations. NIS`s are in-game movies, where the screen changes shape and you are drawn in as the storyline unfolds. NPCs are all the characters in the single-player missions that aren`t Bond - everyone you can’t direct with the controller: grunts, bosses, Jaws (played by Richard Kiel), or Serena St. Germaine (played by Shannon Elizabeth). The hand-to-hand animations can be throws, punches, jabs, or even environmental hazards such as glass bottles and wrenches.

A really complex NIS with 3 characters who are interacting with each other might take 4-5 days straight to develop. You might wonder why the team would spend a week on an animation that you would only see on the screen for 20 or 30 seconds. "We do it because that’s what sets a quality game apart, it’s the standard we`ve set for ourselves, and the level of detail our fans have come to expect," says David.

Click here for the full Insider report on EA.com

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