Nathan Zufelt

Animotive Kimodo is coming to Maya. Your animators describe the movement they want, set the character's pose, and get a skeletal animation generated onto their rig without leaving the scene. Keyframe constraints lock the motion to the timing and positions, so what comes back is something your team can build on straight away. Your animators keep full control of the performance. They just start from a strong foundation instead of an empty timeline. Powered by NVIDIA's Kimodo model and deployed to fit your studio's infrastructure. What enterprise teams get: - Text-to-animation built into Maya -  Pose Guidance to direct the result at key moments - Auto-Retargeting onto your production rigs - Batch creation of Motion Matching datasets for character controllers - Custom dataset training on your studio's own motion data - Local or cloud hosting available The Maya plugin is available as a free trial to game studios. If your studio wants to see our Maya or Unreal Engine plugin running in your pipeline, get in touch to book a demo. #Maya #Animation #GameDevelopment #AnimotiveKimodo #NVIDIA

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Absolutely bummed to hear about BioWare today; being able to say that I worked on Mass Effect 2 is still one of the proudest moments in my career, one of the all time greats... If there is any advice I could give to those of you who've been working for 10+ years hoping that your experience and resume will get you a new gig, as someone who was laid off after working for over 15+ years, I tried just relying on my experience and resume but never got call backs for the hundreds of jobs I applied for (over a year and a half) until I created a demo reel and I immediately started receiving call backs. So don't be like me, have that demo reel ready to go and you'll get back in the game in no time! ✊🏼🤙🏼

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Also representing Edmonton at the Alberta Mega Booth at Game Con Canada 2026 is GHOAT LAB, who be showing off their upcoming title, OFFROAD Recovery: Yoho Trails. OFFROAD Recovery: Yoho Trails is a terrain‑first off‑road simulation about keeping remote mountain routes open through recovery work, cargo hauling, and keeping remote sites accessible. Every job begins with the route ahead. Mud, rock, water, weather, and damaged roads determine how you approach the work and whether you can reach the destination at all. Recover stranded vehicles, deliver essential cargo, clear access routes, and keep remote sites supplied across a rugged backcountry region where changing conditions affect visibility, traction, and route planning. Success depends on reading the terrain, choosing the right equipment, and adapting to the conditions in front of you. You can learn more about OFFROAD Recovery: Yoho Trails on their Steam Page (https://lnkd.in/gWdN3waX), as well as play it for yourself at this weekend at the Alberta Mega Booth! Find us in Hall G, booth #200.

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Meet Our President: Scott Williamson Some leaders manage productions. Some build pipelines. Some develop technology. Scott Williamson has spent more than two decades doing all three. From his beginnings as an artist to leading production technology for one of Canada’s largest animation studios, Scott has built a career around solving the complex challenges that slow productions down and prevent creative teams from doing their best work. His experience spans every level of production—from the studio floor to executive leadership—giving him a rare understanding of how artists, production teams, supervisors, directors, and studio leadership all depend on one another for success. That perspective has shaped the philosophy behind W Animation. Rather than asking artists to adapt to technology, Scott believes technology should adapt to the way great artists work. Today, he’s designing new production systems, developing practical workflow solutions, and rethinking how studios can simplify collaboration, reduce production bottlenecks, strengthen communication, and scale more efficiently—without losing sight of the people who make great animation possible. The ideas currently being developed at W Animation are the result of decades spent inside productions, leading teams, solving technical challenges, and continually asking one question: “How can we make production better for everyone?” This is only the beginning…

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THE NEXT LEAP IN GAMES WON'T BE GRAPHICS. For years, every new generation of games has been measured by better graphics. With the level we are currently at I think that era is ending. Players don't remember polygon counts. They remember presence. They remember the hesitation before a character speaks. The fear in their eyes. The confidence in their walk. The moments that made them feel something. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, and The Last of Us Part II show where I think the industry is heading. Not just toward more realistic worlds... But toward more believable people. Believable moments. Believable interactions. As an animator, I think that's the next challenge. Not making characters look human. Making players believe they are. Do you think the next leap in games will come from graphics—or from more believable human performance? #GameDevelopment #Animation #PerformanceCapture #MotionCapture #GameAnimation #GameDesign #InteractiveStorytelling #Gaming

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Continuing my exploration of AI-assisted previs, expanding the robot encounter into a man vs. machine moment. Includes a comparison with and without performance capture. Using video of myself, I’m able to quickly capture motion and translate it into animation. As someone who’s relied on reference for years, this feels like a natural evolution of the process. Assets created with Midjourney and Meshy, with performance capture in Cartwheel. Soldier rig courtesy of Kiel Figgins. #previs #aianimation #aifilmmaking #motioncapture #filmmaking #vfx

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I have minimal experience in web development (depends on your point of view). I can count on my fingers the number of web products I've developed/handled on throughout my career: - HTML/PHP inventory tracking software - JavaScript API integrations - Flask freelancer portals - A handful of server-authoritative games stuck in development hell - React weekend projects Recently, when I wanted to build a website for a friend, I was debating whether to learn new tech I hadn't played with yet or simply pick the stack that would get the job done the fastest. If only I could use python Qt ports to build websites. That's what I'm most comfortable with and allows me to build robust UIs quickly. The closest thing to that on the web is probably NiceGUI. So my weekend website project took quite a drastic turn. I started developing my own web framework, with a Qt-like API in mind. Widgets, Signals, Layouts. Not because I am trying to build something better than mainstream frameworks But because developing a framework is a very efficient way to learn the underlying technologies that make it possible. So far I've developed one website using it, one which could have been developed in an afternoon using mature technology. But developing websites is how I can develop & improve the framework, by seeing the requirements and implementing a proper API. Check it out below https://lnkd.in/gDVTcpcz

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There's something fundamentally screwed up about a business that makes its money from creativity deciding the creative people are too expensive to keep. EA has killed one of Canada's most legendary game developers, BioWare, and with it, the highly anticipated next chapter of Mass Effect. From an investor relations perspective, I understand the math. EA's $55 billion leveraged buyout left the company carrying approximately $18 billion in debt, with an estimated $1.8 billion in annual interest payments. Management is now pursuing $700 million in annual cost reductions. On a spreadsheet, closing a studio with long development cycles and substantial overhead might look like prudent financial management. As a Creative Director, as a gamer, I see something very different. BioWare wasn't simply a development studio. It represented more than three decades of accumulated creative talent, technical expertise, institutional knowledge and extraordinary storytelling. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Knights of the Old Republic. These weren't simply products. They were worlds that millions of people invested themselves in, emotionally and financially. I've played them all. You can't dismantle that kind of creative infrastructure and expect to rebuild it when the balance sheet looks healthier. And that's what makes this so profoundly shortsighted. Creative talent isn't interchangeable overhead. It's the very thing that creates the intellectual property, customer loyalty and long-term enterprise value that investors ultimately depend upon. I get it, BioWare has had its commercial struggles. That last Mass Effect left us wanting. As did Dragon Age. But there's a fundamental difference between restructuring an underperforming business and eliminating decades of creative capability. The irony is that in trying to protect financial value, companies can destroy the very assets that created it. For Canada's gaming industry, for the talented people in Edmonton, and for those of us who spent countless hours exploring the worlds BioWare created, this is an enormous loss. I'm crushed. Some things simply cannot be measured on a spreadsheet. And once they're gone, they're gone.

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Absolutely gutted by the news about Bioware. Not only a cornerstone of our industry, but one of the biggest Canadian studios in our history.

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