BOX BOTS

Box Bots is a short student film created by 13 Animation and Visual Effects Artists at Escape Studios. The inspiration behind the film was from movies such as Creed, Real Steel and Toy Story. The initial concept of the characters Chromium King and Plastic Mike was inspired by the boxers Tyson Fury and Mike Tyson.

Chromium King concept was to depict himself as a strong, favourite toy who will always win a match. This was through his tall, bulky figure with spikes on his boxing gloves and on his head. To be safe, it had been smoothened out as spikey toys might hurt children who are playing with him. The character would have a BB Belt on his waist representing his win of his match. 

This was than modelled using Maya and Z-brush and textured using substance painter. The rigging was done in Maya focusing on both the body and facial rigging. 

For Plastic Mike concept, he was a cute, small character who always loses against Chromium King. The concept design we went for was to have him as a round character to show his softness as a character and adding broken elements of a toy to show he is an older toy against this new toy Chromium King. Plastic Mike facial expressions were softer especially the face structure of the face being round. 

This was than modelled using Maya and Z-brush and textured using substance painter. The rigging was done in Maya focusing on both the body and facial rigging. 

Secondary assets such as the BB Belt and the BB ring were created in the same process as well. Fun Fact: The BB Belt represent all the nationalities of the creators in the group! 

For the backplates, we had decided to film it at a home. The filming was done during the pandemic. All after measures was endorsed including wearing masks and the limitations of 6 individuals being on set. 

Once the backplates had been selected, we had furthered with Animation. References were gathered through online youtube videos of boxing matches, especially, Mike Tyson boxing matches. Individuals had also filmed themselves and watched movie references such as Toy Story and Creed for ideas of how characters would move and how to bring the toy-like feeling into the animation.  The animation was done using Autodesk Maya. The simulations for the shorts and ropes were doing using Houdini. 

Once animation had been completed, it was than passed on the 2D VFX department. They were focusing on cleaning up shots that included unnecessary toys and furniture around the plates. They focused on integrating assets and characters on to the plates by comping. Also, they included to create cards of the characters to introduce the characters as popular toys in real life that kids love to play! 2D VFX had created stylised shots that included adding depth of field, motion blur, flares and light flashes. The aim for the stylised shots was to make it fantasy-like as if the toys were in their world before awakened by the child barging through the door. 

Once comp had been done, this was edited and colour graded using Davinci Resolve. The Music was created by a composer and was edited into the final film. 

DIRECTED BY

ROSS GREEN

JORDAN COLES

PRODUCED BY

PRIYA SHAH

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MUSIC

MICHAEL BONARDI

VIDEO & SOUND EDITING

JACK DEVEREUX

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

CLEMENT GHARINI

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ANIMATION LEAD

EILIN BERRIO PENA

3D VFX LEAD

ETHEN DENT

2D VFX LEAD

OLIVER BLOWERS

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ANIMATION

EILIN BERRIO PENA

JORDAN COLES

JACK DEVEREUX

PRIYA SHAH

ROSS GREEN

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3D VFX

VIKTOR PTACEK

ETHEN DENT

ARON ALAVAZO

JORDAN COLES

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2D VFX

OLIVER BLOWERS

SEAN MATTHEWS

JALAL AHMED

ALISHA HUXTABLE

EWILSON RODRIGUES MARQUES DE ALVA

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ACTORS AND VOICE OVERS

TOBY KEEP

VICKY KEEP

STORYBOARDING

STEVIE STEDMAN

CONCEPT ART

RYAN WOOD

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SPECIAL THANKS TO

MICHAEL DAVIES

JONATHAN MCFALL

ALLAR KAASIK

AARON HOPWOOD

JACK NEALE

AMEDEO BERETTA