Everybody is under tight deadlines in our industry and because of those deadlines, we sometimes lose focus on the story and the characters we create to tell those stories. During this session, James will explain how their team at Mixamo was able to create a 5 minute 33 second real-time animated short film in just three months. He will show you the process they used to nail down the story and discover the characters. Additionally, you’ll see the techniques they used to identify narrative issues early enough in the development cycle to make changes that strengthen the project. You can take these lessons back to your own projects and apply them to your narrative pipelines in order to strengthen the stories you are creating. Intended audience & prerequisites: This session is intended for animators, narrative designers, concept arts, level designers, creative directors and everybody else who is interested in discovering characters and telling a compelling story in a short and limited amount of time. Session takeaways: Audience members will gain insight into the techniques used during the three month development cycle on real-time animated short film, Unplugged. These character and story processes can be applied to the attendees’ projects and used in their own cutscenes, game-play vignettes and narrative pipelines.