Rat Race city

On top of the scenes we had already created we wanted to attempt to create a scene that would give a good representation of what the inner city would look like at the end of the production. We therefore created a test innner city shot where we see both the protagonist and many other figures trudging past the cold skyscrappers.

Again we started by building the basic geometry to create the camera angle we wanted. Once we had this we built up around this again trying to get across the cold inner city environment adding in dull moncromatic lighting to emphisise this atmosphere. After we were happy with the results we again added in some basic roto characters to give people a sense of the style we were aiming for.

Once we had the final render we took this into photoshop and colour corrected in untill we had the result and look we wanted. Here are some renders of the process of this scene....

Rat Race subway

Another scene we wanted to create for this short film pitch was a subway scene where we see our protagonist make his way through the dull city to his work. We again modelled these scenes in Maya creating both the inside of a subway and the subway station. After the modeling was done we rotoscoped in a few characters sitting down to make the scene more complex and start to get an idea of what the 2D/3D combination would look like when finished.

 

The lighting took quite a bit of editing as the scene consited of so many varying types of light. We wanted to recreate street lights, car lights, building lights as well as the natural light and this took alot of tweaking but we were finally happy with it. After this it was only a matter of adding some asthetical touches like rain and cloths lines before we were finished. Here are some of the final renders....

  

Rat Race city scene cont.

After all the basic geometry had been built up around the house to give the scene its clostrophobic atmosphere we started to consentrate more heavily on the more detailed asthetics of the scene. For example we gave the skyscrappers in the background windows that glowed slightly, the road rails, cars, lines and as well as street lamps and more detail to the house itself.

We both wanted lighting to play a huge role in this short film getting darker and lighter during the charcters highs and lows and bringing to life this cold, clynical urban environment. As you can see from some of these renders the lighting took alot of tweaking as we were using alot of reflectiing surfaces as well as a large number of lights to give the scene the grungy urban feel.

 

Rat Race City scene cont.

After we had decided on a composition from which to create this city scene we started to add in more geometry creating the surrounding buildings, train tracks, motorway and editing the central house. We made the main house quirky and slightly offset as to draw attenton to it and away from the coldness of the city comsuming it.

Rat Race city scene

The second shot we decided to create was a render of the house afer it had been consumed by the city. We really wanted to portray the feeling that our character was somewhat out of place in the urban environment as so the industrial buildings that surround the house were modeled in more square, clynical manner to the quirky house.

We started with a very basic model of the house, road and city in the background from which we could create a camera and composition to base the rest of the scene on.

 

Rat Race cont.

When the story, themes and style had been decided on we started the constrction of several 3D scenes to give the audience an insight into the style and world that we were trying to create.

The first of these was a 'before the city' scene where we would find our protagonist as a child playing in the garden before the city closed around him. This was the most straight forward scene we created for the pitch as the focus was on the house and the background was intended to be kept fairly simple the emphisise the closing in of the city. Here are some still renders from the creation of this scene...

After a basic storyline for Rat Race was settled on my co worker (Calum Meyer) and myself started to design the production, deciding on aspects such as style, themes and 3D and 2D aspects. We decided we wanted to create 3D backgrounds enabling us to create the ambituous timelapse scene and stunning inner city environments. Over this we wanted to rotoscope in our charcters taking inspiration from films like Waltz with Bashir and Scanner Darkly giving our film a sense of realism and the beautful asthetic that a roto technique can provide if executed correctly.    

Rat Race

Going into my third year in Falmouth me and my course mate decided to pitch an idea that could potentially be made into a short film. We wanted to tell the story of a man trapped inside the cycle of the Rat Race, struggling in the urban environment to carve out a life for himself. This story would start in his childhood home and follow him through a timelaspse scene where his contryside home is consumed by the city growing around him. The story would then pick up and follow the protagonist through his tedious life in the city as he comutes to his cubicle office job and later tries to break free from the system.