Done (again) with Gorgeous Knight

Finally done with the last scene of "Gorgeous Knight", and now it's really done as the premiere date of the film has been set to October 15th! The film hinged on the final scene that needed to be completed, a car chase scene.

For those that don't remember, "Gorgeous Knight" is a film shot entirely with over 30,000 pictures instead of actual film. The producers reached out to about 50 design artists and animators (including me) to create the motion using the photos for the film. However, the car chase scene was originally done by other animators a few weeks ago but they didn't like the outcome, so they asked me to take on this last scene for the film.

The next two and a half weeks I built a CG city, complete with traffic, and animated a car chase throughout the busy streets. With all the car and building and other models like a train, the project file in Cinema 4D turned out to be about 270mb, my largest project to date.

With ambient occlusion, a sun array for soft shadows, and hundreds of reflections it took about 57 hours to render out 35 seconds of animation across 6 shots. Then about 6 hours in After Effects to position lights, lens flares, camera shakes for violent motion, a unique design style, explosions, and a dramatic hero shot in the middle of the chase.

About halfway through the building and designing of the city and chase animation I started to lose focus. There were days in which I didn't even touch my computer, luckily the producers put a hard deadline in front of me and I forced myself to complete and meet it. I didn't have to meet the deadline, I was doing this scene for free anyways (all my work on Gorgeous Knight has been pro-bono).

But once the animation started rendering out and I got my glimpse of the final animation, I knew it was worth it. The hero shot alone was totally worth it, everything worked the first time surprisingly with no re-renders and fixing scenes after I had finished the first render. There are a few mistakes in the animation, but using some camera trickery; frame movement, and heavy camera shakes, I was able to create something fast paced, violent speed and overall epic.

The producers were extremely pleased with the results, and with the completion of this scene the film is finally done! Check out the Facebook page for the Gorgeous Knight film! I, alone, designed several key shots, including the opening cinematic titles.

So excited to finally see this film come about!