Wilhelm Ogterop

Wilhelm Ogterop is a veteran character animator with over 30 years of industry experience, spanning 20+ game titles since the mid-1990s. Having served as a Lead Character Animator at three different game studios, he now operates his own small studio, Melowilo Character Animation. Based out of a scenic village in Bulgaria, the studio delivers remote contract work for global projects of all scales while developing its own internal indie game.

Interested in modern animation workflows, Wilhelm is the co-author of the Amazon #1 bestseller, Unreal Engine 5 Character Creation, Animation, and Cinematics. After successfully transitioning his studio’s primary pipeline from Maya to Blender, he authored several specialized animation add-ons for the platform.  He champions Blender as a democratic counter-movement against technofeudalism, dedicated to teaching others how to have fun animating in an open-source world.

Passionate about education, Wilhelm has lectured throughout his career and pioneered the first 3D animation course at the Open Window Art Academy in South Africa during its foundational years. His diverse portfolio includes work on some major franchises such as: Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare,  Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, Deadspace Extraction, Homefront: The Revolution, LEGO Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and more.