Adventures of a mouse win student games prize
AN anthropomorphic mouse desperate to prove herself as a worthy paladin, has earned its creator a national games award.
Cai Jones came first in the Games Animation 2022 category of Search for a Star, a challenge for students not yet in their final year of university.
Judges said the De Montfort University (DMU) student’s Paladin Piper – Cai’s first attempt at 3D animation – showed: “A great attitude, taking on a challenge to push their ability and producing an engaging sequence that felt game-ready and polished.
“Very brave to take on a project using software they’ve never used, but it paid off and Cai would be a great asset to any studio.”
Cai’s prize included software and workshops courtesy of award sponsor Escape Technology.
She said: “I still can’t believe I won this award. I got to network with so many great companies and I’m already in talks with one about a graduate job.
“Even though I’d never done 3D animation before, I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t give it a go.
“Now I really want to go into games character animation and it’s something I’ll be chatting to my tutors about focusing on during my final year.”
She said Paladin Piper is “whimsical, cutesy and hopeful”.
“I really enjoyed working on Paladin Piper. It was a lot to balance outside of my degree, but she turned out so sweet and impossible to resent,” Cai said.
“I did tons and tons of research, desperately watching films with mice characters and reading up about them in real life. The biggest challenge was finding references for legs, as mice have digitigrade ones that bend and move in different ways to human legs.
“The fun thing about making animations is that if you can’t find a reference you have to fill in yourself, so I have loads of behind-the-scenes footage of me in my living room dressed in PJs pretending to be a mouse.
“A lot of the creators I grew up watching and inspired me to go into animation came from De Montfort University.
“They motivated me to do my best and focus on making it happen for myself.
“One of them is Simon Wells, who directed The Prince of Egypt - one of the most notable animated films made this century.
“It’s a masterpiece and something that I adored as a child. He’s a big reason why I chose DMU in the first place.”