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Trojan Horse was a Unicorn: The short film

The incredible talents at Techno Image in Brazil reveal how they crafted the awesome short film for the Trojan Horse was a Unicorn 2014 festival. Go behind thescenes with us!

The incredible talents at Techno Image in Brazil reveal how they crafted the awesome short film for the Trojan Horse was a Unicorn 2014 festival. Go behind the
scenes with us!

The epic THU2014 spot created by the incredible Techno Image team!

It all started a little over a year ago, when some of the Techno Image crew ventured over to Portugal from Brazil to check out the Trojan Horse was a Unicorn (THU) 2013 festival, then in its first year.

After 4 very intense days, the Techno Image team realized there was something a little different about THU compared to other events they'd been to: "We found out that one of the best events in the CGI market and arts in the world had just been created, especially by focusing much more on the artist, than on the market or technology," Techno Image said.

Leaving Portugal feeling inspired and motivated, the Techno Image artists left Portugal entrusted to do this year's poster. But the event deserved more! After a little talk, plus our will and direction to produce animations and our own content, we were doing a film."

The short film was showcased on Day One of THU/2014, bringing a tear to the eye of event organiser Andre Luis, who spent a year planning the very special event and working closely with the Techno Image crew throughout the project.

Catching up with Techno Image after THU/2014, we find out how the masterpiece came together in record timing, and how on Earth they managed to make it look so awesome! Read on to find out...

The making of the THU/2014 Spot

Here we have some of the references we used in the spot. Troy and 300 were a great influence in terms of general mood and atmosphere, while The Pirates had the miniature look, combined with a stop-motion feeling we wanted to print in the spot.

The process at Techno Image is pretty organic. Here you can see the storyboard and animatic that guided us throughout all the production.

The character design was based on the style we usually try to create at Techno Image. It comes from our references and background, studying caricatures and cartoons. It was a little tricky to reach the final horse design, as we wanted to have tiny legs in the stylization, while avoiding a pony-like look. A real horse has its eyes almost on the side of its head, so we had to find the best way to give the appeal and expressiveness to make the character work.

For the warrior we had to remove some of the muscles on the final sculpt, as we didn't have a rig with muscles - it would have looked fake.

Design decisions were a collaborative effort between both 2D and 3D artists at Techno Image, so we used Photoshop and ZBrush during the process. We believe the best software is the one in which each professional feels more comfortable to work and produce, particularly when dealing with creative work.

We believe what makes Techno Images work different is this mix of cartoonish proportions, some caricature look, and realistic textures. Also, in this case we inspired ourselves a lot with Sebastian Kruger's work. He's an amazing caricature artist from Germany and we've always loved his work. For that reason, the warrior's face has some similarity with Kruger. We had some fun with it, referring to the nib as much as we could in both characters.

The model sheet guided us from doing the blendshapes to finding the best approach for the animation. Blend shapes were created in ZBrush and 3ds Max. We usually block the blendshapes in ZBrush to get the overall deformation right then we sent the model to 3ds Max to refine small details.

Model sheets are always very important! Most blendshapes are done based on them. Also, animators often refer to model sheets when working on expressions and general acting for the characters. In this project, model sheet was developed by Lucas Leibholz.

Pedro Conti worked on the final ZBrush blocking of the unicorn and the warrior. He was also responsible for all aspects on the warrior. Victor Hugo worked on the retopology and props modeling, as well as blendshapes for the unicorn. Mariano Steiner did the final sculpting on the horse.

Good designs usually start with good references, so we went through lots of images, studying Greek architecture and ruins, and so on. After that, we started planning the general scenario from a wider scope, like: where would the action happen? The last phase was to design each of those parts, always thinking about how they would help us to
tell the story.

The unicorn was the base idea from which we started everything. Apart from that, the THU team acted mostly suggesting some details, and on the approval of our WIPs. The spot was entirely done at Techno Image. Normally, wed be used to having some back and forth - particularly when dealing with the advertising market - but again, in this project, everything was very smooth.

The tricky part with the set was to manage a way to distribute millions of stones through the ground while still keeping the scene renderable in a normal computer. Most of us at Techno are 3ds Max users, so the solution was to use a proxy system to distribute all the static elements through the base scene. From this step, we then exported the Max file as a Maxwell scene, which was later referred to in our final Maya project. It worked great, as Maxwell Render was able to keep all the repeated elements as instances, so the renders were possible.

Here we have our initial sculpt, and the final topology, with sculpted details added.

Since the horse had an important role with regards to the warrior's loftiness, despite the stylization, one thing we wanted to avoid was the possibility of confusing it with a pony. The warrior should ride a horse - definitely not a pony! With that in mind we made some tests, and the characteristics we found to avoid that confusion were the neck, which is brawnier and longer then a pony's neck would be, as well as the general biotype. Ponies usually have a more swollen and fat look. Our horse is compact, while still brawny. During the character design, the sum of subtle decisions together make a great difference on the overall look. And this is noticeable in the final spot.

And here are some of the tests done during the look-dev and shading of the characters. André was the nicest client possible, so we had as much freedom as we could during the entire project. Everything we showed his was approved so fast - I know it sounds odd, but that's how it happened!

We used ZBrush to block the textures and Photoshop do detail them. Most of the textures we use are provided by scans, which helps a lot with the realism.

Light and color decisions are very important in any film, so we produced several mood tests before choosing our favorite one. Below you can see the final color key and the respective frames from the final animation.

The overall realism is a sum of many elements. How the stones are scattered in the ground, the colors; we used displacement for every single object in the scene, which helps to break the 3D aspect; and, of course, the render engine had a very important role in all this. The spot was all rendered using Maxwell Render. We chose it because it is unbiased and, in our opinion has the best SSS available. We used to say: Maxwell may take a bit more time to render, but that time is saved during the lighting and post-production phases. Computer time is always cheaper than people working.

The renders in this project are almost exactly what you see in the final spot. The comp work was basically a beauty render plus a dust pass and color correction. We believe getting the render as close to the final result as possible makes the final piece much more believable than when comp-ing lots of things.

Related links:

Check out Techno Image's online portfolio
Follow Techno Image on Facebook
Find out more about Trojan Horse was a Unicorn
Follow Trojan Horse was a Unicorn on Facebook
Read our interview with Techno Image's Pedro Conti
Discover a free Digital Art Masters: Volume 7 chapter from Pedro Conti!
Learn more about Maxwell Render

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