Animation Gameplay Essentials - Episode 3/5 : Jumps
- Vanessa
- Aug 26
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 2
The art of defying gravity without losing your footing
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After locomotion and idles, let’s talk about the animation every gameplay animators has to master : jumps !
Heroic, spectacular, liberating... but also one of the trickiest to master.
Across 12 games, I’ve animated all kinds of jumps—from the acrobatic leaps of Prince of Persia to the urban parkour of Assassin’s Creed Unity, and the contextual jumps of Beyond: Two Souls.
And every time, the same lesson: a good jump isn’t a beautiful jump. It’s a jump that supports your gameplay.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was especially demanding in this regard.With its ultra-precise platforming mechanics, every jump—whether from the player or certain enemies—had to be perfectly calibrated.
The level design relied on a multitude of jumps with tight timing and specific trajectories, leaving no room for improvisation.
We had to build a methodical approach, where every animation served clarity, responsiveness, and gameplay consistency.
Why it’s crucial in gameplay animation
Unlike cinematics, where animation can afford aesthetic liberties, gameplay jumping allows no room for approximation.The slightest mismatch in timing, arc, or responsiveness results in immediate frustration for the player.
In gameplay animation, raw realism is often the enemy of playability: a trajectory too faithful to gravity can harm clarity, the feeling of control, and even the fluidity of level design.
In practice: a gameplay jump shouldn’t illustrate physics—it should embody the player’s intent.The animation must extend the input, enhance the sense of agility, and fit perfectly within the action windows defined by game design.
Style vs Responsiveness
In Beyond: Two Souls, I discovered a very controlled approach to jumping: triggered only in specific narrative contexts, via QTEs. We didn’t want a character jumping freely in the street, it felt too unrealistic for the game’s universe.
Jodie’s jumps were scripted: crossing a log in the forest, obstacles during a chase, or moments of dramatic tension.
The technical challenge was significant: these jumps had to meet gameplay constraints (metrics, transitions, collisions) while remaining perfectly believable. Invisible transition into the takeoff from the correct foot, height and distance consistent with the environment, and a smooth landing that naturally flows into running.
On the opposite end, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown embraces ultra-responsive logic. The jump must trigger instantly on input, with no delay.Transitions are sometimes abrupt (a takeoff pose in one frame, liftoff in three), but every key pose is designed to be readable and functional.
Assassin’s Creed Unity illustrates a third path: stylized parkour, where responsiveness is essential—but never at the expense of elegance.Animations are carefully blended, poses are stylized, and every movement retains a choreographic signature.
There’s no universal solution. Style and responsiveness must be negotiated—based on the game’s needs, the player’s expectations, and the engine’s constraints.
Prince of Persia: Structuring Agility in Service of Gameplay
Working on an acrobatic game means adopting a mindset where every frame counts. In this type of experience, precision is non-negotiable, the slightest approximation can compromise the feeling of control.
In this context, it turned out that deliberately “unrealistic” jumps produced better gameplay results than physically accurate ones.
By extending the duration of jumps, beyond the laws of gravity, we create a more readable action window, allowing the player to anticipate, adjust, and react smoothly.
This temporal stretch allows for:
• Clear anticipation of the trajectory
• Calm preparation for the next combo
• Precise adjustment of the following action
• And simply enjoying the fluidity of the movement
This animation choice, designed for gameplay, enhances the sense of control and responsiveness of the character.
This is where gameplay animation stands apart: it doesn’t aim to replicate reality, but to serve the player’s intent and the logic of game design.
The Killer Mistake: Anticipation That’s “Too Beautiful”
It’s a trap many animators fall into, myself included: wanting to create beautiful anticipations, well-defined, elegant, expressive.
“Look how she bends her knees, how gracefully she prepares for takeoff…”
But in gameplay animation, this approach is often incompatible with player expectations.The jump must trigger instantly on input, with no perceptible delay. The player expects an immediate response, especially in action or platforming games where responsiveness is critical.
An anticipation that’s too long creates a disconnect between the player’s intent and the on-screen reaction, leading to a feeling of latency or even loss of control.
The challenge: Reduce anticipation to the essentials, 4 frames is already a luxury, while still maintaining:
• Clear readability of the movement
• Biomechanical coherence
• Smooth integration into gameplay flow
This compromise is a real puzzle: sometimes you have to cheat the poses, compress the timing, or tweak the curves so the takeoff feels perceptible without slowing down the action.
Embracing Harsh Cuts for Greater Control
On Prince of Persia, we allowed ourselves to use harsh transitions I would never have considered on other projects.
Going from the running pose to the takeoff pose in a single frame, then airborne by the third frame…Frame by frame, it’s abrupt, almost jarring.
But in-game, at 60 fps, it’s smooth, and most importantly, perfectly responsive.
Why it works:
•The game is a 2D side-scroller with high movement speed
• The character appears small on screen, so fine details take a back seat
• The player doesn’t notice which foot the jump starts from, but instantly feels the takeoff
• Responsiveness takes priority over beauty: the jump must react to input with zero delay
The secret is that every key pose is meticulously crafted.
With so few frames, you can’t rely on interpolation to smooth things out.Each pose must carry the full intent on its own: weight, energy, direction, and readability.
It’s a surgical approach: sacrificing traditional fluidity to maximize clarity and the feeling of control.
The Crucial Choice: One Animation or Several?
When animating a gameplay jump, the first major decision concerns system granularity: should it be a single animation, or a set of distinct clips orchestrated by the engine?
🧱 Monolithic Approach: one animation from start to finish
• Advantage: perfect visual consistency, smooth arcs, controlled poses
• Drawback: very limited control on the gameplay side
🧩 Modular Approach: split into independent phases
• Anticipation: up to takeoff, often very short (2–4 frames)
• Jump loop: airborne phase, sometimes adjustable based on input
• Fall loop: free fall, triggered from any height
• Landing: transition to idle or chained action
🧪 Hybrid Approach
On some projects, a hybrid structure is used:
• Anticipation and jump are grouped into a single animation to ensure readability and biomechanical consistency
• Fall is handled by the engine via a loop
• Landing triggers as soon as the character hits the ground
This approach keeps the animation reactive and flexible, while maintaining solid visual quality.It offers a good compromise between gameplay control and technical complexity, especially in contexts where level design demands fast chaining or dynamic adjustments.
Red flags : Watch Out for Player Feedback!
🚩“I made a beautiful 12-frame anticipation” – In gameplay, 12 frames is an eternity. The player feels a delay between input and action. Beyond 4 to 6 frames, responsiveness starts to drop, and so does player enjoyment.
🚩 “We’ll see if it blends well during integration” – If a transition feels off in Maya, it’ll be ten times worse in-game. Speed, repetition, and unpredictable inputs amplify every flaw. Blends must be tested under real gameplay conditions from the start.
🚩 “The jump is smooth but a bit soft” –“Soft” in animation means “dead” in gameplay. A jump without punch conveys no sense of power or control. It needs to be snappy, readable, and full of intent.
🚩“We made 20 variations” – If the player doesn’t notice the difference, those variations are pointless. Better to have three clearly distinct jumps, each with a clear function and strong identity.
Key Takeaway:
Jumping is the illusion of freedom in a world of constraints .It turns obstacles into opportunities, frustration into satisfaction.
Each genre has its own demands: surgical precision for platformers, expressiveness for narrative games, efficiency for action. The technique adapts, but the principles remain.
• In Prince of Persia: Every jump served responsiveness
• In Beyond: Two Souls: Every jump served contextual realism
• In Assassin’s Creed Unity: Every jump served parkour fluidity
That’s gameplay animation: bending the laws of physics to serve the experience.
Next article : Episode 4 : Attacks !
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