Enter Yes - Speeding up the animation process in game development

We sat down with Kris Kelly, Managing Director at Belfast based game and animation studio, Enter Yes, to chat a bit about his team's current projects, shifts he's seen in his industry over the past 20 years, and, of course, how Enter Yes are using the Smartsuit Pro in their workflow.

What’s your name, and what is your role at Enter Yes? What kind of work do you do at the studio?

My name is Kris Kelly and I’m the Managing Director at Enter Yes, a small animation and game studio in Belfast. Enter Yes creates a lot of animation for the BBC and animation in documentaries. The company culture and vision is to create serious and meaningful content

What specific projects are you currently working on?

In our studio we have a number of projects with the BBC, a number of documentaries and we have recently started working on our first games project called Before the Blood.

What experiences have you had with the Smartsuit Pro so far? How has it changed the way you work with character animation?

We are currently using the Smartsuit Pro in two of our projects. Our games project called Before the Blood. It includes a lot of fighting and combat, as well as lots of character animation for the narrative scenes. So far, the results have been fantastic. We are also using the suit for pickups for our documentary film called Kings of Sumuva.

What new possibilities does the Smartsuit Pro unlock?

Our experience with the Smartsuit Pro has been fantastic so far. It has completely transformed our pipeline. When we were previously working on our pilot for the game we were creating a lot of character animation by hand. Now, with the Smartsuit Pro, we are able to bring our actors in and very quickly generate a lot of combat and narrative animation that we need for the game and immediately see it working in the game. So, for us the Smartsuit Pro has become an integral part of our pipeline and production.

How do you see the Smartsuit Pro fitting into your future work?

At Enter Yes we always have a number of projects going through studio, production, and in development. We have already started allocating the Smartsuit Pro into developing projects for the coming years.

What would finger tracking enable?

I think finger tracking and gloves would be an incredible addition to the SP. It would save us a lot of time. Currently, we are animating the hands manually and implementing systems into our current pipeline to make the hands automatically. Having a pair of Smartgloves would make our pipeline smoother and our workflow better. I think that the results would be so realistic too!

How and where can we follow your work?

Our publisher in London will soon be announcing the Before the Blood title, including information about its availability and where you will be able find it.

How has your work with animation and CG changed since you started?

Been in the industry for 20 years now and I have definitely seen quite a shift in how intuitive packages are and how accessible certain pieces of technology have become – such as motion capture and other techniques we use in the studio. I really think these new tech and new techniques really allow studios at a smaller size to produce much more compelling content. Our studio has definitely benefited from the SP even over the first couple months of owning it.