L'Escapade

This film was produced during the winter semester of our second year in animation studies at the Université Laval in Quebec City, QC, Canada. The task was to produce a humoristic short starring Mr. Baza, a laughable kind of character (in the manner of Mr. Bean). There were three main scenaristic constraints: 

1. The protagonist needed to see the future

2. The film needed to include a rack-focus

3. There was a time limit of 45 seconds

The idea of the motorcycle jump came quickly to us, as we wanted Mr. Baza to lose control of the situation and be forced onto a series of catastrophic events. Initially, the vision of the future was to be caused by a security camera flash, but after some debate with our teachers (who acted as our clients and producers), we decided to surrender that idea as it was too difficult to understand with the time that we were given. 

The environments were made in Maya using Quixel Megascans assets. The grass is made with a Mash which we used to scatter two models made in SpeedTree. All was rendered with Redshift. 

The vision of the future was a tough one. We wanted it to contrast with the rest of the film, but we did not want to break the rythm of Mr. Baza's descent. We opted for a distracted Mr. Baza already savouring his triumph over the sharks. A glorious silhouette.  

At first, the jump was supposed to be a ballet in slow motion, during which we would have seen Mr. Baza in all kinds of poses, trying to avoid the sharks. But in production we thought that an action-packed sequence would be more in line with the rythm and mood of the film. 

Below is an example of a typical compositing shot for this project, in which we divided the render in multiple passes to give us more control on the colours and possible corrections. Sometimes, scenery elements were added in post-production to enrich the composition (matte painting, moving grass, etc.).

Halfway through production, we faced a considerable challenge when our university closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Determined as ever and working from home, we quickly adapted our workflow as to not miss any deadlines and still deliver a film we would be proud of. 

We are now pleased to share our work with you and be a part of this contest! 

Hope you have a laugh at Mr. Baza's expense! 

-Road Runner team

Credits

Environment:    Alexandre Desjardins

Animation:    Anthony Labrecque

Modeling and Textures:    Éric Levasseur

Rigging and FX:    Jérôme Collin

Compositing:    Maxime Giard

Additional Credits

Tom character and rig by Long Winter Studios

This film uses Megascans ™, Copyright © – 2020 Epic Games, Inc.