Job applications - happy villager

I had a call from an agency a couple of months ago. They forwarded my portfolio to a studio in London. The studio was looking for an animator/rigger with experience in Unity3d and mobile games. My previous experience was close to what they were looking for and that got me to the interview stage. They interviewed me via Skype and explained that the final stage would be a test for which I have 4 hours to complete and send.

The test was on the following week. When I got the project file the clock started ticking. I didn't know what to expect prior to getting it. What I got was just body parts in black and white , and a reference image (on the right). The goal was to rig the character and animate a happy emotion that is up to 4 seconds long.

Rigging the character took about an hour. I arranged some elements into their own subfolders. The hierarchy of elements was key to getting the animation polished quicker. For example I put all face controls under a facedir node - that would allow me to turn her head with less keyframes to manage.
The minimalist character design was a good thing in this case - even with the imposed limitations -such as for example the lack of joints in the legs. I worked with what I had.

All and all they never did give me a call. Instead the agency told me that I have passed their test and they really liked my work. However the CEO has decided to hire somebody that they already know from previous projects instead.

Normally I wouldn't share work done for others, but given how I did not get paid in this case, how they didn't give me personal feedback and also that there was no NDA signed, I feel absolutely free to share this here :)

The animation has a drop in frames, because it is captured from Unity with capture software. When running, it is as smooth as butter 60fps. Thus why all I could get out of the whole experience is now the gif file you see above and the unity project.

If you are looking for an animator with rigging experience - who can do the rigging and the entire animation in Unity alone - I can send you this test file to review it yourself.