A Look Inside A Day In The Life of The Sims 4 Studio

Please note I'm currently working on the new site. I didn't want to take the site offline though, so you can still visit it. However me working on the site while it's still online means a lot of the pages will appear wonky. But not to worry, it won't take too long.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - 20:54

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SimGuruRiley has recently shared a new blog talking about what a day at The Sims Studio looks like for an animator.

With The Sims 4 now launched, I thought it would be fun to show you what my typical day is like as a Senior Animator at the Studio!

Early Morning: Arrive at EA

First order of the day is to check email for any issues, concerns or requests, while I am syncing down the latest build of the game. I look over my calendar to see if I have any meetings to review design or implementation plans. If I don’t have any meetings that usually means I will be animating, testing or refining our work in the game.

Mid-Morning: Stand Ups, Reviews and Prepping New Animation

The animation team usually has a quick meeting in the morning. It’s like a roll call. When our name is called out we declare the work that we will be doing that day. A one sentence statement about the overall feature and how much we have completed usually does the trick. As a team it is advantageous for us to understand who is working on what assets. Informal and quick, the meeting rarely lasts longer than 5 to 10 minutes. We return to our stations and continue work. For the next hour our Animation Directors will meet with each of us to review our animation for quality. The team is large and the Directors have split us in half to help focus the review time. We are, affectionately, Red Team and Blue Team. During the review with a Director we will look at the first pass of blocked out animation, shoot reference video, talk about how a feature is going to work in game, receive feedback on animation or discuss technical issues we have.

Lunchtime:

I like to go out with my Animation Pod. I mentor three animators and we try to get off campus and go out to lunch together once a week. Each time it’s a new place – the hardest part is trying to get all four of us to decide where to go.