Animations inspired by Bavelly’s real-life cats; The top images show the walk cycle of the cats, while the bottom images display the resulting animations.
3D modeler and animator @BaveIIy has always loved animals. She has owned cats (Zaki and Ochi pictured above), fosters kittens, and spends her free time watching nature documentaries. Professionally, Bavelly models and animates stylized animals for Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition and Ecos: La Brea. From analyzing feline skeletons to adding tail sways, Bavelly’s work involves both incredible attention to detail and reimagining of extinct animal movements. Keep reading to learn how Bavelly brings tigers, wolves — and of course cats — to life! 
Learning to Make Animals Sit, Run, and Pounce
After discovering Roblox through her older sister, Bavelly quickly became interested in building and began creating animal models within F3X games. Bavelly started taking modeling more seriously in Studio, practicing with various creatures. As she improved her craft, she began connecting with other animal developers in the community. She directly reached out to the developer behind Wild Savanna to showcase her work and get feedback, and through this connection was recruited to model for Cenozoic Survival in 2018.
During her first development gig at Cenozoic Survival, her team encouraged her to try 3D animation. She quickly learned the ropes through poking around the Animation Editor in Studio and shadowing other animators on her team. Because Cenozoic Survival involved running around and surviving as extinct creatures, Bavelly was tasked with modelling and animating a tiger and a Tasmanian Wolf.
This was her first venture into 3D animation, which she found much easier to pick up than 2D animation, as it requires accurately drawing each frame by hand. Bavelly learned 3D animation much faster, having created models out of clay and learning artistic skills through Roblox.
Joining Warrior Cats and Working on Ecos: La Brea
Bavelly was a huge Warrior Cats fan long before the popular book series became a Roblox experience. When she stumbled upon Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition years later, she joined their online community to follow their development. One of their developers requested feedback from their community on a cat’s run cycle, so Bavelly chimed in. She gave such detailed feedback that the developer gave her the rig to fix — she impressed the team and they immediately hired her. Now, six years later, the Warrior Cats team is about 16 people, with Bavelly as their sole animator. The team is currently working on a sequel, Warrior Cats: Lake Territory! 
Bavelly also works with her previous Cenozoic Survival team on an experience called Ecos: La Brea, which similarly centers around prehistoric animals. One of Bavelly’s more intensive characters she’s created for this experience is the Smilodon, or Saber-tooth Cat. Bavelly had to animate a scientifically accurate Smilodon for her experience despite no visual references of the extinct animal.
From Creating Semi-Realistic Animal Models to Rigging Downloaded Skeletons
Before jumping into animation, Bavelly models, textures, and rigs her 3D cats and extinct animals. She takes pride in her semi-realistic style that is accurate and scientific. She starts with a base sketch in Blender to get initial feedback from her team, before digging into the details. Bavelly hand-paints her textures in Procreate, adding in color, fur details and multiple layers. Bavelly has a 40-page document of cat markings she’s created so that any player in Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition can make any cat they imagine.
To ensure her rigged model balances realistic detail with performance optimization, Bavelly has adjusted her process over the years. When she first started rigging models, she included a lot of bones to aid in expression and movement. Now, with the upcoming sequel of Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition, her focus is making sure her models are low poly and not using too many bones. It was a challenge to retain the realism of the animal’s anatomy, but she was able to reduce bones in the ears, torso, tail, and toes to lessen the bone count.
Breaking Down An Animator’s Workspace
When creating a new animation, like a cat walk-cycle for example, Bavelly follows this workflow:
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Gather reference videos and images: Bavelly starts her process by searching for references on YouTube, Getty Images, or Shutterstock of a cat walking in multiple views (side, front, top).
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Animate in Blender:
- First, she blocks out the animation, starting with the basic movements of where the poses will start and end.
- From there, she breaks the movement into quarters: the cat stepping forward, the passing frame where the legs cross each other and then the next step forward, and finally mirrors it with the other legs.
- After, she breaks the movement down into eights, paying attention to how the legs move at three-quarters.
- And lastly, she breaks it into sixteenths. She starts with the side view then moves to the front view. She’ll make the body move from side to side and shift the weight back and forth between feet. She’ll finish with adjusting the hip and head movement, and making the body curve in a natural way.
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Get feedback from her team: Throughout the process, she sends clips of the work-in-progress animation to her team and iterates based on feedback so that everyone is happy with the final product.
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Finalize the animation: She reviews the Graph Editor to ensure the curves are smooth and then adds in final details — how the ears bounce, the tail sways, or where the eyes need to focus.
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Bring the animation into Studio: After finishing in Blender, Bavelly then imports the animation into Roblox Animation Editor. She may tweak a few last details here like adding in stepping sounds or deleting keyframes from the animal’s mouth. Lastly, she uploads the animation to the experience and then it’s live!
Tips for Animators
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Find your niche. Figure out what types of characters you enjoy animating and what your unique style is, and then find where you’re needed. -
Practice as much as possible. Understandably, lots of people want to make it big and work on a top experience. But becoming an expert takes lots of practice, so take small jobs and lesser known projects to hone your skills. -
Advocate for yourself! Whether it’s your commission prices or artistic vision, make sure you speak up about what you want.
Thank you @BaveIIy for chatting with us! Be sure to follow her on X and Roblox to stay updated.
