Animating a tormented monk through rotoscopy, blending faith, guilt and motion in Penance

I wanted Elías, the main character of Penance, to move with a human fragility slow, deliberate, almost burdened by guilt.

To achieve that, I used rotoscopy, recording myself and others performing the gestures: walking, praying, collapsing. Then I traced the silhouettes frame by frame in Procreate, keeping only the pure black shapes.

The result is a set of animations that feel halfway between a shadow and a memory consistent with the game’s tone of spiritual horror and redemption.

Each animation (idle, walk, pray, death) has its own rhythm all controlled later in Godot through a hybrid AnimationPlayer + AnimationTree system.