Ballad of Red

Ballad of Red:

Ballad of Red is a fully 3D animated fight sequence, set in the derelict city of androids, Old Empyrean. Under the light of the moon, Balgon Seq, a heartless, biomechanical soldier, is dispatched to hunt and eliminate his target: Noq, a liberated android now living as a mercenary.

Our main goal for this project was to push our animation and cinematographic skills to create a tense and action-packed fight sequence with an original visual style somewhat inspired by the visuals of 90's animation.


BalladOfRed_Master_v03.mov

Process

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ZBrush Movie2.mp4

Our Major Project concept first began with a character which Ben had modelled. Still unnamed, this would later become Balgon Seq. At first, we wanted to work with games students to create a fighting game before ultimately deciding that an animated fight sequence would allow us to truly test and display our skills.

We really wanted a project where we would have the creative freedom to play with cinematography and animation techniques which we normally wouldn't be able to.

Ben then went to work on the writing and storyboarding while Joe worked on the early previs animation. We decided to work on our project in a phased implementation method, wherein we would transition and update our original previs scene as time went on, making adjustments to the animation and cinematography accordingly.

Similarly, from the beginning we planned to work on the animation stage in a "pass-over" method, wherein one person would complete a pass of the entire animation before handing it off to the other for refinement in the next pass before handing it back, repeating the process until we moved on to rendering.

This way, we could keep the entire project localised in a single project instead of several, each pass being handled by a fresh set of eyes meant that each pass received improvements frequently, and while one of us was animating, the other could work on finalising textures, asset models, or visual effects.

MEET THE TEAM

Joe Marshall

Email:

Project Roles:

  • Previs Coordinator

  • Environmental Modelling

  • Asset Modelling

  • Rigging

  • Animation

  • Visual Effects

Ben McCarthy

Email:

Project Roles:

  • Lead Writer

  • Cinematographer

  • Character Modelling

  • Asset Modelling

  • Animation

  • Editing