Animating the faces of fear and courage in Call of Duty: WWII

I remember the days when Call of Duty games didn’t show the face of a soldier who was talking, mainly because the facial animations were so unrealistic. Not anymore. With Call of Duty: WWII, the new game in the blockbuster series that Activision revealed this week, you can see the fear, anger, determination, and courage in the faces of the soldiers.

The technology to render the raw emotions of the soldiers of the Second World War have finally reached the point where the faces and bodies of the soldiers look realistic. And that was the job of Christopher Stone and his team of animators at Sledgehammer Games, the Foster City, California-based studio that is making Activision’s next blockbuster first-person shooter. Stone had to study the faces of fear.