Short Narrative Film
This project was undertaken during my Bachelor of Fine Arts (Film, Screen and New Media) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). It is a science fiction psychological thriller short film, set in a dystopian future. I took on the role of Virtual Environment Artist for the project.
The brief was that for many of the scenes throughout the short film, it would take place in a bedroom apartment around eighty floors high. The concept was to create the effect of an apartment with a large ceiling to floor window, that overlooked a dystopian, futuristic city skyline. By having access to the Virtual Production studio at QUT, the goal was to develop an environment in Unreal Engine, and the sequences could be achieved using Virtual Production.
After initial sketches and planning, I sourced free assets from various online services and began building out a rough environment within Unreal Engine. Large portions of the environment were sourced from free KITBASH3D kits and FAB.com asset library built into Unreal Engine.
After a couple of iterations, I sourced parallax window assets to allow create the illusion of depth within building apartments. I then further iterated on the design of the layout, experimenting with lighting setups.
Art department had developed logo’s for the fictional company of Luvco Deliverables. I sourced the original files from the Art Department to develop 3D holograms for use within the Virtual Environment.
I transformed the illustrated 2D logo into a 3D model with materials by using blender to extract the logo into polygons, then UV wrapped, and exported out to Unreal Engine where I could apply materials that were supplied by the University, which I could modify to meet my desired style.
A technique I learnt from my Technical Supervisor in the Virtual Production space, was to use 2D plates in the background for very far away buildings to create the illusion that the environment is larger, whilst saving on optimization and performance. All 2D plates of buildings were sourced from Adobe Stock.
I was updated on further art developments for holograms and billboards that I could incorporate into the environment.
Above is various assets that I used to Kit bash together, to create three different cyberpunk vehicles.
Below are the three vehicles with close ups.
Below are images of VFX work on the production. the task was to simulate a timer countdown.
Below is a sequence of a VFX pipeline for merging to shots, one plate of an actor, the other of a dummy with a practical effect of dummy head being crushed. The goal was to create a believable effect to look like one continuous shot with enhanced blood effects.
It consisted of a face replacement, where the face of the actor was tracked to replace the crushed dummy head so that parts of the actors face would be placed on the crushed dummy skull.
Below are Behind the scenes shots of the production.
Elliott Hawkins Films 