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Lazarus.
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Overview
Completed as part of my Virtual Production on an LED Volume course at NFTS this animation was incredibly joyous to put together. A departure from my day to day work in Unreal Engine with a more fantasty based project. For me this is a first step on a much more story driven, cinematic approach to an animation. My process has been the same for what I approach most creative projects; writing, drawing, animatics, drafts. But here I let myself play a bit more than client based shorts.
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Story
A murky plot that I never really wanted to tie down properly.
A murky plot that I never really wanted to tie down properly.
I've always felt that Death is stalking before it appears in it's fullest form. Are we preparing for it, how do you prepare? How do you react to it? These are heavy, impossible questions that I wanted to float through the animation. Our main character is building a machine, of sorts, to travel to the afterlife; whatever that may be. Sometimes I thought he was going to retrieve someone (two chairs in his boat), but I also like the idea of him going to retrieve himself.
It is a short, fleeting story that I hope can be open ended enough to be interpreted however you want it.
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Onwards
Onwards
Moving forwards from this project I'm exploring the amazing tools Unreal has for character animation; something that was quite rushed in the end on this film.
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Process.
Process.
As with many of my UE projects I block out scenes using simple shapes and forms before going in and bringing them to life. For the tower interior I knew I wanted a strangely shaped room and a feeling of overwhelming work having been achieved within it.
The ceiling is purposely skewed and warped, with the arching pillars at strange angles. A mixture of assets and models fill the walls with pointed, simple lighting.
The exterior of the tower is set in a vast, wild landscape. At first this landscape was more boggy and damp but it became slightly more epic as the process went on. UE really does leave you with a sense of anything is possible, and I think this is one of the main points when considering animation within it. Picking the shot, location etc becomes much more true to real life; you find yourself location scouting in your project.
For the 'Isle of the Dead' I went through many iterations. At the very beginning I had it as an actual island in a sea, first at day then at night. But soon I discovered this wasn't matching the energy of my first few scenes of the tower. A lot of playing around followed before arriving in a spinning, whirling space.
The ceiling is purposely skewed and warped, with the arching pillars at strange angles. A mixture of assets and models fill the walls with pointed, simple lighting.
The exterior of the tower is set in a vast, wild landscape. At first this landscape was more boggy and damp but it became slightly more epic as the process went on. UE really does leave you with a sense of anything is possible, and I think this is one of the main points when considering animation within it. Picking the shot, location etc becomes much more true to real life; you find yourself location scouting in your project.
For the 'Isle of the Dead' I went through many iterations. At the very beginning I had it as an actual island in a sea, first at day then at night. But soon I discovered this wasn't matching the energy of my first few scenes of the tower. A lot of playing around followed before arriving in a spinning, whirling space.
