Here at Engine House we thrive on a challenging brief, particularly a project that requires a super fast turnaround. There is something about the collective enthusiasm and creative necessity that it demands that inspires and energises us.
We don’t mind a rough brief and an understood vision in the client’s head. We love a rough page of ideas, communicated well enough that we immediately know what they want to see at the end of the wee handful of weeks leading to deadline day.
So imagine our delight when we were contacted by a company in California who had a vision for a fast-paced, funny and exciting hype video for their Metaverse project, Petropolis. They sent through a rough scripted storyboard referencing Sing and Zootopia and explained that they needed a 60 second video in six weeks time.
That meant in six weeks we needed to:
Agree story and key points
Storyboard
Make script tweaks
Design the Petropolis world
Design and create 10+ characters - model, texture, fur, groom
Animate 60 seconds
Commission and edit voice, music and foley
Set up and light 3D scenes
Create 2D graphic overlays
This is where our pipeline becomes invaluable. Not only are we autonomous enough to take on a project like this at short notice, but our approach and use of a realtime engine allows us to make this possible, whilst still maintaining the highest level of creativity. We love knowing that in a matter of weeks, something totally unexpected and cool will be completed; from little to nothing to something we can watch.
So how did we do it? Well, it looked a little something like this.
Week One
Week One was getting to grips with the project. We had a call with the client to get the root of exactly what they wanted and then we jumped straight into look development and storyboarding. We like to run these processes concurrently to allow us to make the best decisions for both the style and story, each one impacting the other in terms of budget, schedule and impact. We also started looking online for base models we could use for some of the characters. With so many to create, we needed to find quick and efficient ways of bringing this video to life.
Week Two
With base models scouted and the look dev and boards signed off by the client, we started remodelling, texturing and rigging the characters. As many of the cast are animals, we had lots of fur and feathers to consider.
We also put out an audition for the voices, looking for the actors who could bring personality and life to the characters.
A shot list was put together and shot lengths were timed, ready to hand over to our animation partners on this project Superspline Studio. We decided to hand over this chunk of production in order to be able to focus on the central creative direction in house. This was sent over with an animatic from our storyboards with scratch voices and temp music.
Week Three
Having received the voice tracks, we had some back and forth with the client to make sure we got the character’s delivery and persona bang on. Once these were finalised, we had a timed edit the animators could work from for physical movement as well as lip syncing.
More than half of the characters were modelled, rigged and textured and the various environments were being designed. As we moved between the “regular” world and the exciting world of Petropolis, we wanted to make sure the latter stood out as bright, dynamic and colourful.
Week Four
As storyboard shots are one by one replaced with splined animation and then final shots lit and in their environment, the project begins to feel tangible. This is always a really exciting stage, when the pictures in our heads materialise on screen. During this time, several versions of the edit are exported and as a team we discuss, tweak and improve.
This is also when our trusty audio magician Ronan Scolard gets involved, building up the layers of music and foley, firmly rooting the story in a living, breathing world.
Week Five
By week five we were getting into the finalfinal.mp4 exports. The beauty of realtime means that those little tweaks and fixes we want to make add up to an hour or two of export time, rather than hours and hours of heaving rendering in the dark. It means that during a single day, we can be making several changes, both to fix little issues but also to add in finishing touches that elevates the final product.
Week Six
Following on from last week’s final touches, we work through a “nice to have” list - where we list in priority order all the last details we’d like to add. Because of our pipeline and hustle on this project, we were able to work through the whole list and add in all the small extras we wanted. This includes details such as the flying splinters as the beaver cuts through the tree trunk.
With these projects, there is always more that could be done if you had another few weeks, but we were pleased to have the time to play around with That’s about it; changes made, final passes approved, final files exported.
And that’s it! Sixty second delivered in six weeks.
