Cathy Nichols

Associate Animation Director / Principal 1 Animator

Rancho Santa Margarita, CA

I’m an animator with 10+ years of shipping games, and I live for bringing characters to life—acting out scenes, pushing poses, and chasing that perfect timing that makes players feel awesome. I love crafting big, expressive gameplay moments just as much as the small emotional beats that give characters a soul. Along the way, I’ve also stepped into animation director responsibilities: building and leading animation teams, shaping pipelines from scratch, guiding style and performance, and keeping production moving without crunch. On the technical side, I’ve got the chops—building scalable workflows, wrangling engines, solving the weird animation problems no one else wants, and keeping everything running smoothly so the art can shine. Whether it’s a heroic attack, a snarky eyebrow raise, or a creature doing something delightfully unhinged, my goal is always the same: make animation that makes players grin and feel incredible.

Experience

Animation Director

Obsidian Entertainment

2023 - 2025

Team Size: 7 Animators | 3 Character Tech Artists | Outsource Management

Helped create, improve, and maintain a highly customizable new Conversation System in collaboration with multiple departments, supporting thousands of conversations, and built an automated pipeline that populated conversation files without requiring animator involvement.

Took over from the previous animation lead and maintained deadlines, rescoping conversations, cutscenes, and gameplay to realistic timelines while preserving quality, guiding animators toward faster iteration without overwork, and collaborating with Programming and Design to restructure the gameplay systems.

Collaborated closely with JALI to improve their technology and enhance the OEI conversation system.

Worked with the outsourcing team and outsourcers to clean up conversation assets, providing weekly reviews and feedback.

Organized and optimized gameplay animation sets to increase player reactivity while reducing asset count.

Created JIRA tasking and maintained project tracking, while also documenting workflows and “tribal knowledge” in Confluence.

Animation Director

Obsidian Entertainment

2019 - 2023

Team Size: 2 Animators | 1 VFX Artist | Outsource Management

Launched the Animation Department on a new engine alongside the Lead Designer and Programmer, establishing a fast iteration pipeline that got animations in-game quickly and kept other teams unblocked.

Built a scalable character pipeline enabling animations to be shared efficiently across hundreds of characters, while also establishing standards for 2D character asset creation and providing technical animation support — including rigging, skinning, and engine integration.

Supported 3D assets by handling skinning, material setup, and unique UV requirements to ensure proper UI display and in-game functionality.

Provided animation support across characters, creatures, VFX, and cutscenes — including animating conversation moments with expressive gestures and emotions to enhance narrative impact.

Created storyboards for key cutscenes to align project leadership on narrative direction and visual intent before full production.

Collaborated closely with Programming and Design to build and maintain core feature pipelines while optimizing in-game assets for multiple platforms — including vertex optimization, mesh performance, and texture packing across both 2D and 3D content.

Managed outsourcing by creating style guides, delivery packets, and providing feedback to ensure 3D assets were game-ready, while also directing the animation and VFX teams with clear guidance and a unified artistic vision.

Created JIRA tasking and maintained project tracking, while also documenting workflows and “tribal knowledge” in Confluence.

Managed the closure of the Animation Department, stabilizing pipelines for final release and future patch support.

Add. Animation:
Conversations

Obsidian Entertainment

2024 - 2025

Team Size: 9 Animators | 4 Character Tech Artists | Outsource Management

Took over the conversation pipeline to bring it back into scope, building on and improving the system from Avowed while enhancing the automated pipeline to reduce animator workload, and partnered with production to restore scope without requiring crunch.

Worked closely with directors and studio leadership to present updates on conversation pipeline improvements and overall animation team progress.

Directed the animation team with clear guidance and a unified artistic vision.

Senior Animator

Obsidian Entertainment

2017 - 2019

Launched the Animation Department on the project using a new engine, establishing the animation style and pipelines for the team, creating a rapid-iteration workflow, and developing an animation pipeline to share animations efficiently across multiple characters.

Animated and implemented first and third person player, companions, NPC’s, and creature assets for gameplay.

Collaborated with the Project and Art Directors on key cutscenes and conversations, animating gestures and emotional performances to bring characters to life and support the narrative.

Created and maintained project documentation on Confluence to share workflows and “tribal knowledge” across multiple departments.

Staff Animator

Obsidian Entertainment

2015 - 2017

Quickly created and maintained various gameplay animation for player, companions, NPCs, and creatures, while developing and supporting multiple stances for player party, factions, and bosses to ensure attacks, abilities, and weapons function seamlessly within robust combat suites.

Collaborated closely with project and art directors to animate and refine key cutscenes.

Helped skin a wide range of characters for ship and collaborated closely with the Character Tech Animation team to create, refine, and review rigs for the Animation Department.

Built and expanded on Unity’s animation controllers for classes, attacks, abilities, and core character movement, and implemented various characters and animations directly into the Unity engine.

Collaborated with programmers, designers, and other developers to implement features, maintain a large character pipeline, and troubleshoot technical issues across the project.

Managed the closure of the Animation Department, stabilizing pipelines for final release and future patch support.

Associate Animator

Obsidian Entertainment

2014 - 2015

Quickly created and maintained various gameplay animation suites for player, companions, NPC’s, creatures, and weapons.

Helped skinned a wide range of characters for ship and collaborated closely with the Character Tech Animation team to create, refine, and review rigs for the Animation Department.

Created several UI icons for different character class attacks and abilities.

Built and expanded on Unity’s animation controllers for classes, attacks, abilities, and core character movement, and implemented various characters and animations directly into the Unity engine.

Collaborated with programmers, designers, and other developers to implement features, maintain a large character pipeline, and troubleshoot technical issues across the project.