Playground

A childhood memory, brought to life in 3D

Playground is an interactive 3D scene built around “Boo,” a character from a childhood game that stuck with me. It wasn't about recreating the game, but capturing its feeling: the playfulness, the slight eeriness, the sense that something is alive and reacting to you.

The scene lives in the browser: keyboard and mouse trigger different animations, and Boo reacts, moves, and shifts its attention. The interaction is simple; the goal was to make even simple interactions feel full of personality.

From polygon to personality

The character was modeled from scratch in Maya, basic polygons sculpted toward Boo's rounded, soft silhouette, then textured in Substance Painter with hand-painted albedo and subtle imperfections so the white surface feels like a physical object, not a flat CG render. Rigging and animation were set up in Maya and exported to Spline, whose browser runtime maps click, keyboard, and hover inputs to animation states.

• Idle: a subtle floating loop with gentle eye tracking, so Boo feels aware even at rest.
• Triggered reactions: surprise, curiosity, playfulness, each loopable and blending smoothly back to idle.
• Environment: simple geometric shapes and a limited palette keep the focus on Boo, no visual noise.

What animation teaches you about character

Giving a static model personality is almost entirely in the timing and weight of its motion — a few frames of anticipation or overshoot do more than any amount of surface detail. Animation is where the character actually lives.