<Projects
Karma (2024)
Director: Josh Lange
Company: MPC Visualization
Role: Writer, Director, Animation Supervisor, Editor, Lighting Artist
Time on project: September 2023-April 2024
Karma was an internal animation project using Unreal Engine 4 that our visualization department's skeleton crew collectively did during the Hollywood strikes of 2023 when we were between paid shows. To attract new clients, our department head Patrick Smith assigned different story themes for different animators to take point on for making YouTube videos: Iva Carrasquillo was the lead on a fantasy/magic short, Connor Tracy did a dogfight, and when I freed up later on, Patrick requested I make some kind of car chase. With so many hours logged animating on racing games and Fast and Furious movies, I felt confident I could deliver something exciting as long as I kept the scale in check.
PHASE 1: STORY
To get started, I refreshed myself with the subgenre by compiling some favorite car chase sequences from things like Fast & Furious/Hobbs & Shaw, Mission Impossible, and Pennzoil and "The Hire" commercials by BMW, then choosing specific moments within them to emulate. I wrote a story outline that strung these beats together and pitched to Patrick, then we explored options before settling on this McLaren 720s vs. Ducati 1199/suitcase Macguffin story. I made rough storyboards in Photoshop and edited them into an animatic with placeholder footage from those famous chase scenes, telling a complete and determining the length and complexity of the film. I liked how the cinematography of car chases have us with the characters most of the time and keep things moving by peppering in quick inserts like a character's glancing at new targets, shifting, pulling the e-brake, etc. One thing I know about filmmaking is that if a story isn't compelling in an animatic, the final version won't hold the audience's attention--especially with so much competition just a click away on the web.
PHASE 2: LAYOUT/ASSETS
Once the story was clear, I assembled pre-existing assets from the MPC Visualization database, and coordinated with our asset artist and VAD supervisor Todd Thornley to see what he could pull from other sources or make himself. We saw a modular city environment on the Unreal Marketplace that would work well for the setting, and I built a proxy environment in Maya and proceeded with animation blocking. Karma was my third Unreal pipeline project at work (Nope was the first) and although Maya is slower to animate in compared to Unreal, our pipeline at the time was more suited fo Maya animation which was then exported to Unreal for final rendering. By making a rough "layout" pass for each shot that matched my animatic with all the elements represented (camera, characters, vehicles, FX, env), I could later pass the files off for animation. As layout progressed, Todd fleshed out the Unreal environment, which was initially far too small to cover all the distances the speeding vehicles covered. This helped me tighten up the timing and correct the vehicle courses to ensure they would properly end in a faceoff. It was a tightrope to walk to not spend too much time customizing city blocks but still have the city not feel too repetitive.
Karma (2024)
Director: Josh Lange
Company: MPC Visualization
Role: Writer, Director, Animation Supervisor, Editor, Lighting Artist
Time on project: September 2023-April 2024
Karma was an internal animation project using Unreal Engine 4 that our visualization department's skeleton crew collectively did during the Hollywood strikes of 2023 when we were between paid shows. To attract new clients, our department head Patrick Smith assigned different story themes for different animators to take point on for making YouTube videos: Iva Carrasquillo was the lead on a fantasy/magic short, Connor Tracy did a dogfight, and when I freed up later on, Patrick requested I make some kind of car chase. With so many hours logged animating on racing games and Fast and Furious movies, I felt confident I could deliver something exciting as long as I kept the scale in check.
PHASE 1: STORY
To get started, I refreshed myself with the subgenre by compiling some favorite car chase sequences from things like Fast & Furious/Hobbs & Shaw, Mission Impossible, and Pennzoil and "The Hire" commercials by BMW, then choosing specific moments within them to emulate. I wrote a story outline that strung these beats together and pitched to Patrick, then we explored options before settling on this McLaren 720s vs. Ducati 1199/suitcase Macguffin story. I made rough storyboards in Photoshop and edited them into an animatic with placeholder footage from those famous chase scenes, telling a complete and determining the length and complexity of the film. I liked how the cinematography of car chases have us with the characters most of the time and keep things moving by peppering in quick inserts like a character's glancing at new targets, shifting, pulling the e-brake, etc. One thing I know about filmmaking is that if a story isn't compelling in an animatic, the final version won't hold the audience's attention--especially with so much competition just a click away on the web.
PHASE 2: LAYOUT/ASSETS
Once the story was clear, I assembled pre-existing assets from the MPC Visualization database, and coordinated with our asset artist and VAD supervisor Todd Thornley to see what he could pull from other sources or make himself. We saw a modular city environment on the Unreal Marketplace that would work well for the setting, and I built a proxy environment in Maya and proceeded with animation blocking. Karma was my third Unreal pipeline project at work (Nope was the first) and although Maya is slower to animate in compared to Unreal, our pipeline at the time was more suited fo Maya animation which was then exported to Unreal for final rendering. By making a rough "layout" pass for each shot that matched my animatic with all the elements represented (camera, characters, vehicles, FX, env), I could later pass the files off for animation. As layout progressed, Todd fleshed out the Unreal environment, which was initially far too small to cover all the distances the speeding vehicles covered. This helped me tighten up the timing and correct the vehicle courses to ensure they would properly end in a faceoff. It was a tightrope to walk to not spend too much time customizing city blocks but still have the city not feel too repetitive.
Example of an animated shot in Maya using our initial assets for the layout and anim phase.
PHASE 3: ANIMATION/ENV POLISH
With the prepped 3d layout scenes ready to hand off, I brought in Iva and Connor to help me get through animating the 41 shots. I used Ftrack to track progress and notes. They rapidly fleshed out the detail, adding facial and finger detail and subtle secondary motion. I took over shots as needed and refined them further so Iva and Connor could roll back to other shows and priorities. Having the help of two other animators also allowed me to pull some pedestrians and parked car assets from our library to export to Unreal and flesh out the streets, which helped keep things from looking too bland, empty and redundant. By now my edit was fully replaced with animated Maya renders, and every shot was to my liking, so I used our TDs' department's tools to export shots to Unreal.
With the prepped 3d layout scenes ready to hand off, I brought in Iva and Connor to help me get through animating the 41 shots. I used Ftrack to track progress and notes. They rapidly fleshed out the detail, adding facial and finger detail and subtle secondary motion. I took over shots as needed and refined them further so Iva and Connor could roll back to other shows and priorities. Having the help of two other animators also allowed me to pull some pedestrians and parked car assets from our library to export to Unreal and flesh out the streets, which helped keep things from looking too bland, empty and redundant. By now my edit was fully replaced with animated Maya renders, and every shot was to my liking, so I used our TDs' department's tools to export shots to Unreal.
Before/after comparison of our placeholder Maya environment and the final Unreal parking lot asset from the marketplace.
More Maya/Unreal comparisons. The red parked cars were marked to replace with unique ones for Unreal, but we ran out of time. I used After Effects to make the dashboard HUD more accurate to the McLaren's, along with an animated speedometer.
PHASE 4: RENDERING/LIGHTING/WEATHER
Our department had great tools for automating the export process, with only a few corrections needed once shots landed in Unreal. With them all exported, I was able to get into the engine and start correcting the properties of each intersection in the city asset, so streetlights and traffic lights were correct for the direction of traffic. Then I added hero lighting to punch up the depth and contrast and clarity of each shot as needed. As we worked in Fall 2023, it seemed possible for us to complete the project by Winter, so I had the idea to add Unreal's snowfall weather and add Christmas lights on deciduous trees that ran along some of the streets to help dazzle up the lighting, which would match audience's real lives when they watched it during the Winter Holiday season.
Our department had great tools for automating the export process, with only a few corrections needed once shots landed in Unreal. With them all exported, I was able to get into the engine and start correcting the properties of each intersection in the city asset, so streetlights and traffic lights were correct for the direction of traffic. Then I added hero lighting to punch up the depth and contrast and clarity of each shot as needed. As we worked in Fall 2023, it seemed possible for us to complete the project by Winter, so I had the idea to add Unreal's snowfall weather and add Christmas lights on deciduous trees that ran along some of the streets to help dazzle up the lighting, which would match audience's real lives when they watched it during the Winter Holiday season.
As phases progressed, each shot was defined with dynamic lighting, fleshed-out street decorations and pedestrians, and realtime weather effects.
PHASE 5: FX/RENDERING/RELEASE
As things neared completion, I made final touches in Unreal like animating the police car lights and adding muzzle flashes to the biker's gun. When each shot was approved in Unreal, it was time to render them out. By now the animatic had sound effects and music, so it was simple to drop in final renders over the older ones. In January 2024 it was looking good, even though it took a bit longer than expected and Patrick and I still had plenty of CBBs. At this time, paid work was starting to return to the department, which began taking people's time off the project, myself included. I was fully busy on another show by the time I heard from Patrick in April that he was happy enough with what we had made in January to release it online. By then, I had been mulling over a few titles in my mind, and the name "Karma" had become my clear favorite( despite the pun aspect). Since the biker illegally transported a bomb and the driver stole it, I liked that both people got their just desserts in the end, which felt like a true example of karma. When it landed on YouTube, I was grateful to hear that peers enjoyed it and am very proud of the results achieved from the work everyone put into it.
Karma visualization team:
Head of MPC Visualization - Patrick Smith
SVP Client Project Engagement - Katie Hooten
Visualization Supervisor/Karma Director - Josh Lange
VAD Supervisor - Todd Thornley
Senior Visualization Artists - Connor Tracy, Iva Carrasquillo
Head of Pipeline - Ryan Zukoff
Pipeline TD - Kaitlyn Behrens
As things neared completion, I made final touches in Unreal like animating the police car lights and adding muzzle flashes to the biker's gun. When each shot was approved in Unreal, it was time to render them out. By now the animatic had sound effects and music, so it was simple to drop in final renders over the older ones. In January 2024 it was looking good, even though it took a bit longer than expected and Patrick and I still had plenty of CBBs. At this time, paid work was starting to return to the department, which began taking people's time off the project, myself included. I was fully busy on another show by the time I heard from Patrick in April that he was happy enough with what we had made in January to release it online. By then, I had been mulling over a few titles in my mind, and the name "Karma" had become my clear favorite( despite the pun aspect). Since the biker illegally transported a bomb and the driver stole it, I liked that both people got their just desserts in the end, which felt like a true example of karma. When it landed on YouTube, I was grateful to hear that peers enjoyed it and am very proud of the results achieved from the work everyone put into it.
Karma visualization team:
Head of MPC Visualization - Patrick Smith
SVP Client Project Engagement - Katie Hooten
Visualization Supervisor/Karma Director - Josh Lange
VAD Supervisor - Todd Thornley
Senior Visualization Artists - Connor Tracy, Iva Carrasquillo
Head of Pipeline - Ryan Zukoff
Pipeline TD - Kaitlyn Behrens
