ORUS

  ORUS was developed as a Graduating Solo Project for my Animation Degree.

  Its intended purpose was for me to experience the entire workflow required to create, direct and manage a short animated production. During my studies, I have been involved in 3D modelling, environment design as well as character creation and rigging. Sometimes all three in a single project. For myself, experience is key to being successful. The challenge of creating a solo animated project from scratch, and in less than 26 weeks would be a true test of my studies. It was a chance to be completely involved and learn about all of the departmental interdependencies that support an animated production pipeline.

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

                                                                                                                          ~ Benjamin Franklin

  During the project, there were many times that I wished I'd chosen a path with fewer learning curves. In retrospect, the journey was very much about finding my feet as both driver and mechanic. Then add being a panel beater and specialist auto-electrician into the mix. As Oscar Wilde once said - "Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.", and according to Wilde's metric, I gained an extreme amount of "Experience" over the project's pipeline. 

  But not everything was Stress Stress Stress... there were many times during the project that brought joy. Like learning to make the rotating asteroids and finally working out how to attach a Metahuman head on a character model's body without the offset sending the head all over Z-Space. Looking back and seeing the project completed; when it felt like that day would never come - is truly rewarding. I guess it's why we do it again and again....

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...a little about the artistic process

The Opening Space Scene

The opening scene depicts human expansion into a new galaxy. The vivid colours of the volumetric nebula symbolise the bright new future that awaits the human race. Juxtaposing the vibrant nebula is a dark and menacing spaceship. Its shape is reminiscent of a naval battleship. Aesthetically it represents the legacy of human colonial expansion. Its utilitarian texture and fossil fuel-driven engines give the audience a glimpse at what truly facilitates human exploration - The need for FUEL.

  The images above demonstrate the opening scene's progressive iterations. The first concept embraced the emptiness of space. The next pre-vis shots display a growing fantasy element developing in my aesthetic. As beautiful and fantastical as these scenes look, ultimately a pared back version was chosen. This was to focus the scene more on the animation and less on the scenery. In the final scene choice, I believe I found a good balance of colour, focus, dynamism and still a little bit of Wow-Factor.

  The opening scene is probably the element that I spent most of my time devising and revising. It was the first scene that I created, and it was absolutely the In-Road to my project's development. It was like the doodle on the phone pad that grew and grew into a poster-sized graphic. The paring back of the scene was an important lesson for me to learn as a content creator. As an environment artist, I wanted to add everything beautiful and fantastical to the scene. As a director - I had to focus on the purpose of the scene. That purpose was the spaceship and the thematic intention conveyed by the spaceship. The beautiful clouds and asteroids meant that the audience would miss the detail of the spaceship. And with less than seven minutes to tell my story - every scene had to do its job.

  This experience has taught me (as a content creator) to ask more qualifying questions in the future. Even questions of myself. What is the purpose of the scene? What will be happening in the scene? What themes should the environment be supporting?

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As part of my project's thematic content, I wanted to include an environmental message for my audience. I wanted to highlight the impact that humans have on any environment they live in. In Scene One - my project presents a bright new world for the human species. It offers the chance to find a new direction. I wanted Scene Two to clearly reveal the reasons for human advancement in space technology - Resource Security. I wanted my audience to understand that in the anonymity of space - Big Tech will continue to operate with impunity.

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The Death of a Planet

Scene Three is the depiction of a dead planet. It was designed to place the audience as front-row witnesses to the after-effects of a core-mined planet. We are familiar with seeing open-cut mining activities on Earth. This cut scene was included to show the effects of mining on a planetary scale.

The sequence is also a necessary story device. It is a setup for the following scene, where we see the planet ORUS being surveyed for potential core mining.

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The Mining Survey Facility

Scene four is the first time that the audience is introduced to the planet ORUS. We see its distinct orange horizon, with an orbiting mining survey facility looming in the foreground. When constructing the composition, I wanted the aesthetic of the orbiting scientific facility to resemble a harpoon about to be launched into the flesh of a whale. I wanted the scene to encapsulate humans hunting for resources.

Aesthetically ORUS parallels the planet Mars in its colour. Mars is a quintessential part of human space folklore. Its image is familiar. The thematic intention draws upon our current focus on travelling to Mars. Scene four adds to the storyline of planetary scale destruction, with the addition of a "Discovery" made during the survey team's inspection of the planet. This element touches on the human desire to find life in space. The audience is left to wonder if the need for energy will outweigh any anthropological discovery...

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The ORUS Logo

The name ORUS was taken from one of Jupiter's largest Trojan Asteroids - 330,000,000 kilometres from Earth. It is a name derived from Greek mythology.

My design for the ORUS Logo title sequence was heavily influenced by Disney's Kenobi title sequence. The Sand-Effect would prove a perfect reflection of the desert surface of Orus. The effect was created in After Effects. It would most commonly be made in Houdini. However, time constraints and a lack of access to Houdini meant finding another way. The final iteration of the Sand-to-Text Logo is a combination of the VFX made in After Effects, and additional compositing of sand particle footage sourced from Production Crate. I simply colour-graded the particles to look more like golden sand.

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ORUS Surface Flyby

Scene Six introduces the audience to the surface of ORUS.

The Set Design for the Planet's Surface went through three differing designs before the final choices were made. In the concept stage - it was still very unclear how advanced the inhabitants of the planet would be. I knew that I wanted a desert-planet surface to emulate a desolate and abandoned atmosphere. However, I was not sure of what or if any structures might be present on the surface.

The final iteration of the ORUS Planet Landscape evolved from a need to combine a spaceship fly-through and the presence of Alien Structures on the surface. This would connect the audience with an arrival on the planet and a heightened sense of discovery.

To create my Alien Landscape, I used Epic Games Megascans Terrain Assets and Assets from I.L.E.P Studios (Alien Heads). In the image below you can see the constructed film set I used to film Scene Six. The diorama you are looking at is enormous. It was running at a texture streaming of 20K. The set was initially larger and more detailed. However, this caused enormous issues when it came to rendering. If the Render Sequencer didn't crash, it was estimated to take nearly 10 hours to render. I quickly reduced the number of assets to only those visible in the camera to reduce the texture streaming values.