ASTRAN

MOVIE

PITCH 

The creatures that threatened our world for centuries are now under strict surveillance, imprisoned by a powerful spell. Astran, the council leader, is dispatched to investigate a perilous specimen that has gone silent.

KEYFRAMES

BREAKDOWN

CONCEPTS

Concepts Breakdown - 

We wanted to re-explore the heroic fantasy genre, using codes that are well known to the general public, but also using new, personal sensations. We spent several months thinking and brainstorming to create this new universe.

For this we did a lot of artistic research in order to build a believable and realistic world. We wanted to have a variety of concepts in order to have a rich pre-production, and be able to provide a maximum of details.

We decided to focus on the main elements that serve the story. We therefore put our efforts on the creation of our village and more particularly the tents and crystal. We also put our efforts on the cave with the chained dragon which is a key element of the story and the main means of locomotion, the boat.

The music is also a very important element for immersion in this new universe. The predominance of wind and female vocals supports the heroic fantasy and adventure art direction. The music also supports the film's growing tension and illustrates the "epicness" of the final scene.

CHARACTERS

Characters Breakdown -

Our characters are the heart of our story, we wanted to create new species of creatures in order to give the audience some new on the screen. We did a lot of research during our pre-production in order to give them aspects and abilities well to them. We wanted both an alien look and a familiar feel, reminiscent of today's animals.

For Jampa, Astran's little companion, we wanted a small flying creature anatomically close to an already known pet. So we decided on a mix of dog and fox with the fantastic ability to light itself in order to illuminate the shadows of this world.

Noctilus, our first bad guy, is a mixture of a snake and an octopus to awaken a sense of fear in the viewer. He has tentacles to allow a movement system similar to an underwater animal. And to add some additional details and fantastic aspect, we created some translucency parts to create an original design.

For this final creature, Horus, we wanted to create a big snake dragon, that was similar to Noctilus, the small one, yet not just a bigger version of him. We had to create a lot of small details to sell the immense scale of the creature. As well in the sculpt but also in the lookdev.

For the Sound Design we really wanted to give an identity to Noctilus and Horus close to snakes to get away from a classic dragon sound design. Jampa was made entirely by mouth and the main difficulty was to reproduce a cave reverb and give an idea of the scale of creatures according to the frequencies used.

ENVIRONMENT

Environment Breakdown - 

After talking about characters, let’s move on to the environments in which they live and move.

Concerning the village, this is a classic approach in Houdini with a procedurally generated floor and then a set dress of assets and props to enrich the environment.

We also used a lot of composting techniques for the outdoor environments, such as matte painting and projection. This was particularly useful for the background of the village and the very wide shots with large environments. We first created a solid cgi base and then we added details using real photos.

Regarding the environment of the cave, we started by establishing a base in a procedural way, giving us flexibility on the size and shape of the cave. Once the main proportions were established, we started working in a more traditional way, adding scanned meshes for more realism and several layers of scatter.

Then, we were able to export our files as .ass and .abc depending on our needs.

FX

FX Breakdown - 

Our film features a wide variety of FX. We created several very different setups on Houdini like pop, pyro, vellum or rdb.

Most of our FX are present on a multitude of shots. For example, for the energy, to facilitate the workflow, a single setup was made for the whole film, over a wide enough frame range to have diversity in the movements.

Concerning the destructions, we have three different FX. The Horus awakening, the collapse of the cave and the destruction of the mountain and the end. We first created one big setup for each sequence and then we split into shots to adjust more precisely according to the camera angle.

Another issue we faced was the size of some of them. Horus, the largest creature, is 100 meters long. So we had to manage to keep this scale visible while still having visually aesthetic simulations.

LIGHTING

Lighting Breakdown -

For our lighting workflow, we chose Katana because we wanted the ability to have multiple shots in one scene, and Katana seemed to be the best fit for our technical challenges. We didn't know the software at all, so it was a challenge to learn it on our own.

We first created a Cyclo Template scene in Katana to perform the look development of all our props, creatures, and scatter objects.

We also created a .bat script as a TxConverter to convert our .exr textures to .tx files, allowing Katana to read them.

Then we developed our setup in Katana with one scene per sequence (we had 4 sequences, the largest one with about 35 shots). We had master lighting setups that we could use for each shot, which allowed for better organization of all our work. We could switch between shots very quickly, and our modifications could be applied to all shots in one scene.

We created numerous variables such as:
Switch between shots
Switch between hard disks (useful depending on where we were working)
Switch between output (where we wanted the shots to be rendered)
Switch between quality (low, medium, high, with samples set up depending on the chosen quality)
Switch between versions (which versions of shots we wanted to render)

Each variable was interconnected, allowing us to modify what we wanted very quickly across all our shots.

We set up master lighting, key lighting, and then created variations as child lightings.

Katana sequence scene example

COMPOSITING

Compositing Breakdown - 

On this project, as we just saw we have two full CGI environments, one outside and one inside. We also have 3 full CGI characters that evolve at different scale. And finally one actor filmed on a greenscreen set, and all of that had to interact and look real to the audience. This is why our challenges on the compositing side were very important, we tried to use more live elements to bring details and photorealism to the screen. Especially with the tale sequences where we needed to have a lot of nuance in the graphics but also some depth in this model. We, of course, faced more technical challenges like cleaning, rotoscoping, tracking or keying. And try to make as many projections and matte paintings as possible to bring details and richness to the environment. And still keep the fantastic look that we were looking for. 

THE TEAM

Margot Auclair :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/margot-auclair/

Axel Baudin :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/axel-baudin-093924154/

 Nawel Bensadok :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nawel-bensadok-445b8b6b/

Antoine Hazard :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoine-hazard/

Sarah Hecky : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-hecky-a5a7b91a2/

Lancelot Maestrini :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lancelot-maestrini/

Nils Mitrecey :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nils-mitrecey/

Ivan Oliel :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-oliel/

Valérian Pierret :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerian-pierret/

Loïc Billen :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/loic-billen-546571254/

Antoine Froidevaux :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoine-froidevaux/

Régis Royer :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/regis-royer/

Abdel Diarra 

Thank you for reading this far!
We want to thank again our teachers, connections, friends, and family for their help and support.