AboutMe
I’m Bogdan Gerasymenko, a gameplay animator who builds the motion players feel in their hands: first-person weapons, characters, and the mocap that sits underneath them.
It started with LEGO and clay stop-motion in middle school, then 2D. In high school, the first-person shooters I loved sent me straight into 3D, wanting to make weapons feel the way they did in my favorite games. My first work station was a family computer so old it could only run first-person rigs, so they became my entry point into the world of animation.
Since 2020 I’ve animated on Squad: Vietnam, Half-Life: Vance and Hunt Down Freeman, led animation on Exorush, and most recently was Senior Animator on Dark Aviary, taking on its most complex gameplay, character and cinematic work while mentoring the animators around me.
My work has been featured in 80 Level80 Level, and I earned a BA in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina in 2026 to become a stronger collaborator with engineers.
Approach
Gameplay always comes first for me. An animation can look amazing, but if it slows the player down or feels off in their hands, I’m not done with it. I work closely with design and engineering to find the balance between how something looks and how it plays.
On a team, I set clear standards, give straight feedback, and make time for the animators who need guidance and mentoring.
Disciplines
- Animation
- Viewmodel (first-person), character & locomotion, cinematic, mocap cleanup
- Leadership
- Animation direction, pipeline & documentation, mentoring mid and junior animators
- Software
- Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine 5 / 4, Unity, Source Engine, Source Filmmaker
- Code
- Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python and C#
- Languages
- English, Ukrainian, Russian, German (beginner), Spanish (beginner)
Off the clock
Photography, pencil and pen sketching, oil and acrylic painting - the same eye for weight, light and composition, without a frame counter. Some of it lives on the Extras page.