Ricky Wood's Animation Reel - Ninja Theory's Finest

If you've ever wanted to see what the demo reel of a top notch game industry animator looks like, look no further. Ricky Wood is currently a principal animator at Ninja Theory, the company behind DMC, Enslaved, and Heavenly Sword. Having spent close to ten years at the studio and climbed the ranks to where he's currently at, Ricky has had the chance to work on every title the studio's put out to date, setting a new industry standard with his fantastic house animation style.

Unlike many other studios Ricky's approach stands out for his hand keyed animation style, which doesn't use motion capture and instead relies on straight up hand animating his work to imbue it with some true personality. His love for animation kicked off at the age of 13 with a copy of 1994's live action/animated hybrid The Pagemaster, when Ricky decided to attempt to recreate a snippet of animation from the feature film. This fateful event culminated in Wood's pursuit of an animation degree,and a college transition years later from 2D to 3D animation which allowed him to secure his place in the games industry.

Joe Han's Animation Reel : What 14 Years Of Experience Looks Like

I'm baffled that Joe Han is currently looking for a job, as I've never seen a reel this good since starting this blog. Joe was one of the employees affected by the Valve layoffs, which seemed to affect a significant number of former movie industry folks. Gabe Newell alluded to his dissatisfaction with movie industry folks in his recent Reflections Of A VideoGame Maker talk, just a week before that strange layoff.

Joe has had a chance to work at WETA and Valve on the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, King Kong,TinTin, iRobot, Left4Dead, Counterstrike: Global Offensive, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, including the amazing shorts for Meet The Medic, Meet The Pyro and Mann Vs Machine. This really begs the question, why did he get laid off, considering his stellar contributions to all of Valve's key franchises? We'll probably never know, but I doubt he'll have a hard time getting a new job at one of the best studios out there in no time.