The Genesis of A Game About Snowmen
David Rosen of Wolfire Games game a talk at GDC 2014 about procedural animation in Overgrowth (available here). I found his talk fascinating on two levels. First, it was quite interesting how he was able to get so much from so little. Totally fluid animation from just a few keyframes and a little bit of math for intelligent interpolation. Second, he made it look easy enough that I could do it, even with my extremely limited art skills.
By the time this made its way to the top of my to-do list, it was late in 2014, and snow was on the ground. Snowmen seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn about procedural animation, while at the same time allowing me to stretch (and squash, lol) a bit beyond what the video covered, applying the techniques in a new way.
It worked out pretty well. The next step was to build a game around this neat animation.