Game Animation Services: 2D, 3D, Spine and Rigging

Game animation services are outsourced production of the motion in a game: character cycles, combat and reactions, facial animation, UI and reward motion, props and cinematics. A full service also covers rigging, the skeleton and controls that make art movable, and engine integration, so clips blend correctly when players act. Studios use them to add capacity or skills their in-house team lacks.

Animation-only work is priced from your asset list (characters, clips per character, method and polish level) and quoted after a scoping call. When animation is part of a full game build, Capermint's typical ranges are $10K–$40K for a casual or skill single-game MVP, $40K–$120K for a mid-scope multiplayer game and $120K+ for large custom projects. Tool licenses, motion capture and voice work are usually extra.

It depends on clip count, method and polish level, so we set dates at scoping instead of quoting one figure. A style test with one rig and a few clips comes first; after approval, the remaining characters run in batches, each reviewed in your engine. Sharing one skeleton across characters or skins shortens the schedule most.

Choose by art style, camera and target devices. 2D, usually Spine skeletal animation plus some frame-by-frame effects, suits mobile, casual, card, board and slot games and keeps files small when you need many clips or skins. 3D, keyframed or from motion capture, suits games with a moving camera and depth. Many games mix both, such as 3D characters with 2D UI motion.

Spine is 2D skeletal animation software from Esoteric Software. Artwork is split into parts attached to bones, animated with meshes and constraints, and exported as small skeleton files plus a texture atlas. Use it for 2D games with many animations, character skins or slot symbols, where hand-drawn frames would use too much memory. Official runtimes include Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, Phaser and PixiJS.

Rigging builds the skeleton and controls inside a character so an animator can pose it. In 3D that means joints, skin weights that tie the mesh to the joints, IK/FK controls and facial blend shapes or joints. In Spine it means bones, meshes, weights and constraints. A clean rig makes every later animation faster to produce and safer to change.

Yes. We can animate on your existing rig, audit it first and fix weights or controls, or build a new rig on your model. Send the source files, engine version and naming conventions, and we match your skeleton so new clips drop into your animator controller or state machine without retargeting.

We deliver for Unity, Unreal Engine and HTML5/WebGL games. 3D animation ships as FBX with the source Maya or Blender scene; Spine work ships as the Spine project, JSON or binary skeleton data and texture atlases; frame-by-frame work ships as sprite sheets. We can also set up Unity Animator controllers, Unreal Animation Blueprints and Spine runtimes in your project.

Yes. We animate symbols, reels, bonus intros and win sequences timed to the game math and to each market's technical rules. For example, Great Britain's RTS 14 bars casino games from celebrating a return less than or equal to the stake, and Ontario's AGCO standards require each bet and outcome to be clearly displayed and information not to mislead players. Operators are responsible for licensing; we build to the target jurisdiction's technical requirements. General information, not legal advice.

Ownership is set in the contract. For custom work, the contract can assign the source files, including rigs, Spine projects, Maya or Blender scenes and engine exports, to you on final payment. Third-party tools and libraries, such as the Spine runtimes, stay under their vendors' licenses, and anything we reuse is listed before work starts. General information, not legal advice.