Abbey Janssen - Alex Ireland - Ben Roe - Joshua Cook - Kaleb Treloar - Manuel Scussel - Megan Lucas - Samantha McGregor

Follow Astrea on her journey of revenge and realisation

The Hunt is a 3D animated short film telling the story of Astrea and her journey of revenge and realisation. Set in a high-fantasy, Nordic mythology inspired world, Astrea treks through the depths of the viscous tundra to find the beast and avenge her late father.

The Hunt General Use.mp4

PRODUCTION HIGHLIGHTS

CHARACTERS

ASTREA

The first step in the creation of Astrea was to develop and finalise her concept art alongside our specialised concept artist, Sam Rogers.

From here, I used ZBrush to sculpt her face and body in detail, then Maya to retopologise and UV unwrap it for our animation team to start using.
Next was the clothes creation in Marvelous Designer, which was a lot of fun. Followed by retopology and UV unwrap in ZBrush and Maya.

Once the model was complete, it was time to texture. This was done in Substance Painter, with a High poly -> Low poly bake for most items, making sure to prepare everything for Unreal Engine 4.
In the meantime I set up and built up the different hair cards for Astrea's hair, face and clothing.

Finally, I handed everything off for implementation into UE4.

GU'NEARTH

Gu'Nearth / role description

In making the creature for this project, I firstly went through a lengthy process of concept development to get the design of our creature polished off by our concept artist, Sam Rogers.

Once I had the final design, I went through a lengthy process of sculpting the creatures body in ZBrush, then texturing the retopologised mesh, and eventually taking the final model into Houdini to work on making the fur. After working on making the creature, I handed the final model off to our rigger Kaleb, to rig the creature for our Animators.

PRE-PRODUCTION

Storyboards

BoardsAnimVer.pdf

Animatic

Animatic Ver 3.mp4

These storyboards and the animatic acted as a guide for how the final animations would play out. It set the groundwork for how the story would be told and the emotional journey we would be taken on.

Concept Art- Gu'Zei

By Sam Rogers

Concept Art- Astrea

By Sam Rogers

PROPS & ASSETS

The first step I took to make the props was gathering references to give a correct and realistic appeal to them. Then, I created a basic version of the models in Autodesk Maya, to then bring them into ZBrush and add detail.

The next step is helping the computer to process the model and its detail, so, I simplify the topology by retopologising it in Maya as well as UV unwrapping each model. This helps translate a 2D image (the textures) to the 3D model giving the deserved detail.

The 2D textures are made in Substance Painter and then given to the next person to implement them to the scene or to the character.

ENVIRONMENTS

Cabin Establishing Shot - Graveyard Scene

Inside Cabin

In the creation of the environments for The Hunt, I worked off the concept art/storyboard that were created by our storyboard artist, Abbey Janssen. Using fSpy to match the camera perspective. In Maya I began the blocking stage and planned out the lighting for each scene. Once complete was brought into Unreal Engine 4 to be refined using a mixture of asset created by our lead asset artist, Manuel Scussel, and our outsourced asset artist, Elias Holthouse and Krzysztof Karszniewicz. Using a mixture of their asset, Quixel Megascan library and foliage I created in SpeedTree to populate the world of The Hunt. Lighting the world was done in Unreal Engine 4 using directional and sky light to ambient lighting, point and spot to highlight assets or fake global illumination. For the final rendering the character was lit in a 3 point lighting set up.

Forest Scene - Giant Tree Scene

Arrow Shot Scene - Cave Scene

ANIMATION

We breathe life into the characters through motion.

BestOf_Astrea_small_1.mp4

Animated by Megan Lucas

Animating Astrea

The emotional journey of Astrea was really important to the story and one of the harder parts to portray.

The whole short is pantomime acting, so body language and timing were our main focus. We wanted to make it clear the way she was feeling. There would be no verbalised words to describe or express her feelings, so we really had to make sure we were getting the emotion across.

Animating the Gu’nearth

Our animators had a hard time finding reference for the Gu’nearth’s actions as it is a mythical creature. Days went into finding appropriate sources and I have to say it sure did pay off.

The main animals that inspired the motion of the Gu’nearth are cats, deer and Monster Hunter’s Odogaron.

Can you spot the influence of our inspirational animals within the animation?

BestOf_Gu'Nearth_small.mp4

Animated by Mia Dator

The Hunt was animated in Maya 2022, then brought into Unreal Engine 4 for environmental animations and to render.

VFX/Rigging

Technical Artist - VFX/Rigging

For this project, I was in charge of creating the Gu'Nearth and Astrea rig, creating VFX/simulations to enhance the film, and troubleshooting any issues that occurred throughout the pipeline. Through this project, I encountered multiple issues, with the rigging and the pipeline. However, after doing some research and trial by error, I was able to solve most of these issues, with exceptions to the Gu'Nearth fur from Houdini to Ue4.

Arrow - VFX

211209_Astrea_Shooting_MFS.mp4

ArrowRender (1).mp4

Snowfall - VFX

Snowfall_ArrowCave.mp4

Gu'Nearth - VFX

GuNearth_shot_02.mp4

211209_Gu'nearth_Run (1).mp4

Astrea/Gu'Nearth Rigging + Gu'Nearth Fur Sim

Gu'Nearth_DYN (1).mp4

GuNearth Rig.mp4

AstreaRig.mp4

Render_02.avi

AUDIO & SOUND DESIGN

Soundtrack

An Elegant but intense soundtrack that takes inspiration from nordic/Viking style of genre while mixing soft light elements like violins and a chior of boys to fulfil a intense yet beautful soundtrack that plays over the animation 'The Hunt'.

Music Composition:

This is the session used for The Music composition, everything you hear in the composition was done within this session.

To compose and create the soundtrack, I used Abelton 11 and Pro Tools 2021.6. We also utilised multiple plugins including Ozone - For Mastering Omnisphere and Kontakt Instruments, to make everything sound the best it could.

Foley placing:

This is the session where we gathered our foley into a single DAW and started to impliment them into the animation.

Monster SFX:

Using Different styles and references we were able to get a general idea on how the monster should sound like, A huge referencing for us was the game Monster Hunter which has a huge selection of different creatures/Monster types to explore.

PROMOTION & MARKETING

Yagan Tower

TheHunt_PIPLayout_Yagan_ALTERNATE.mp4

On top of being screened at Palace Cinema, The Hunt is also having periodic screenings on Yagan Tower. This is a great way to gain more exposure and allow even more people to watch the film.

Posters & Promotional Material

These posters include concept art produced in both the early and late stages of production. In addition to an active Instagram page, marketing was a huge part in boosting the project and aiding in its success.