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 for ideas of how characters would move toy-like.  

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 depth of field, motion blur, flares and light flashes. 

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.