Rogue Squadron: A Top Gun / Star Wars Mashup & Fan Film

Rogue Squadron is my first complete animated short. I made it while learning Unreal Engine and 3D animation workflows at CG Spectrum. I saw it as a proof-of-concept and testing ground for how to make my own original shorts, while also working on something fun and exciting. 

I put the film on YouTube in early December 2022, happy that I had completed it, and moved on with new personal projects (I am trying to be an indie animator). A few months later, it somehow caught in the algorithm and exploded - it is currently at 135k views and counting, but more importantly the amount of love that viewers have shown in the comments has given me the confidence that maybe I could be good at this. 

I have worked on other projects since, but this one will always be special. 

Concept: Top Gun x Star Wars

I have always loved the Michael Stackpole Rogue Squadron books, and the on-again / off-again Patty Jenkins movie based on that series got me very excited when it was announced. I thought it would be really cool to see X-Wings in an asteroid base, but in a more "grounded" air combat context, as in Top Gun. 

To reduce the number of variables in my first short, I decided to use the original sound from the opening of Top Gun, and replace all the visuals with fully recreated Star Wars environments, vehicles and characters. I wanted it to be set in the Star Wars universe, but staged and shot like Top Gun. 

Lighting & Look Development: Sunset in Space

An early challenge was how to achieve the sunset look of the Top Gun opening sequence - in space, where there is no sunset. A mentor pushed me on the fact that my early attempts (first image below) were too yellow, and did not read like space. 

The solution I eventually came up with was to place a large reddish planet nearby the space station. The reflected red light allowed me to partially light the scene with reds, pinks, and oranges while keeping the cold white light of space in the background (second image below). I was also able to move the planet around from shot to shot to frame the X-Wings exactly as I wanted.

Environment: Space Station meets Aircraft Carrier

In the Stackpole books, Rogue Squadron's base is built into an asteroid, but I also wanted it to look a bit like an aircraft carrier from Top Gun. I kitbashed the environment together from 3 main kits: CGPitbull's Asteroid Base kit, Kitbash3D's Spaceships kit, and BigMediumSmall's Mech Squad kit. There are also smaller elements from many other places (full credits at the end). The interior and exterior shots are all done in the same real-time rendered level inside Unreal Engine.

Staging & Cinematography: What would Tony Scott do?

The nice thing about a fully built realtime environment is being able to fly around inside it and find interesting camera angles and framing. In the hangar, I mostly tried to stick to the original sequence's grounded cinematography, all shot practically - meaning a lot of crew POV shots, low to the ground - but couldn't resist doing a few shots from above the X-Wings, to fully capture how cool they look. For the shots in space, I either attached the camera to the X-Wing to get the feel of a practical camera or tried to emulate the look of the original Star Wars trilogy's practical models. 

Since the environments are quite busy and crowded, and there is a lot of steam VFX going on, I did take extra care to ensure decent depth separation with per shot rim lighting and highlights, and with careful use of long lenses. I also added a subtle camera shake to each shot to make it feel more real (the original is shot on a carrier deck, so there is constant motion). 

Vehicles: X-Wings as F-14 Tomcats

The X-Wings are front and center, so I spent extra time on them - they are kitbashed together from 2 separate models. I had to reshape and fit the cockpit assembly from one model into the fuselage of another, edit the undercarriage to fit, and add detail to the engine nozzles since they would be seen in some close-ups. 

I also rigged them in Blender, built Unreal Control Rigs to more easily animate the cockpit and wings, and baked the undercarriage extension / retraction animation for use in sequences. I wanted the engines to feel like the jets in Top Gun, so I added a modified Niagara particle system to use as an afterburner trail.

Characters: Rebel Alliance as Carrier Deck Support Crew

The only rigged, clothed character models I found that fit the aesthetic were the two human models that came with the BigMediumSmall Mech Squad kit - so I added helmets (partly to hide the fact that I was repeating the same two models) and recolored their uniforms for the various roles - pilot, navigation, deck crew etc. I even replaced one head with a Rodian head model so they wouldn't all be human :)

I found animation packs that I could use selectively for running, working, and even tactical hand signals, and retargeted them to the model skeletons. Sometimes two or more of these animation sequences had to be blended to get the right effect - for example all the pilot actions had to be seated, so that required blends below and above the pelvis. 

There are also several droid cameos in various shots of the film - apart from the R2 units in the X-Wings, a mouse (MSE) droid, a gonk (GNK) droid, and even R2D2 himself are all in a shot or two each.

Editing & Production Tracking: 62 shots is a lot of shots

I used Unreal like a camera - rendering footage to ProRes or EXR and importing them into Resolve for editing. In Resolve, I was able to use the original as a visual and audio reference track. I mostly matched the cutting rhythm of the original throughout, and tried to match the action to the audio — so the hiss of steam, the whirr of cranks, the thuds of aircraft landing on deck — this last of which I matched throughout to the visual of X-Wings jumping to hyperspace. I added a few sound effects here and there (chirps from R2 units etc) but mostly left the sound as it was in the original.

This was a pretty complex undertaking overall, with a lot of assets to organize and 62 shots in total. Keeping my Unreal project organized by folder, and clearly tracking all the kits I was using for kitbashing, took a little work, but was worth it in the long run. Each shot needed a lot of detailed cleanup, and since it was my first time learning about a lot of these concepts, I turned to my old friend the spreadsheet to help out. My production tracker was pretty basic, but it got the job done. 

Gratitude: So. Many. Thanks.

I have put down the full detailed credits below, including the sources of all kits and assets used in production. I would never have been able to make this film without these amazing artists and their willingness to share their work. I contacted as many as I could to let them know I'd used their work and got many encouraging and happy messages back.

Naturally this is a fan film, and uses a lot of copyrighted material - from the music and sound, to the Star Wars IP, and even the Stackpole book series concept of Rogue Squadron. I'm grateful that Paramount, Disney, and Lucasfilm seem to view these fan films as a positive expression of love for the franchises. 

The gang at CGSpectrum are the real heroes here - from answering every one of my dumb questions, to providing to-the-point and constructive feedback throughout - both technical and artistic - there is truly no way I could have finished it without them. In particular, Deepak Chetty for multiple rounds of shot by shot feedback, Logan Pinney for introducing me to the engine and teaching me to be zen about Unreal, Marc Carratala Arce for being my lighting guru, and Simon Warwick for leading this kind and merry crew. 

The fan reaction to this film has been so heartwarming - reading comments like "I had tears in my eyes" and "I was grinning like an idiot the whole time" and seeing all the calls for a full film or series, really gave me a huge boost of confidence. I quit my job in 2022 to learn to make indie animated short films, and seeing so many people love something I made means that maybe that was the right choice :)