Cougar Hit

The old "bad guys who can't hit the broad side of a Death Star" cliché loses its appeal after a while, so here Cougar takes quite a wallop, and sets Declan off on his whirlwind tour of the shipyards where Zaf can pick up the action and abuse the TIEs some more.

Hyperspace Jump

Thumbs up for MAX's rounded cylinder primitive, and animated primitive parameters which enabled me to animate the height of the cylinder to turn it from a point of light into a streak of light.

Corvus Approaches Planet Keishing

Zhanna's ship Corvus is a beaut thanks again to the amazing design skills of Adam Benton. What a privilege it was to fly. It would've been interesting to take Corvus into combat or maybe along for the shipyard chase, I think.

Prison Establish

A million thanks to Håkan 'Zap' Andersson, and his invaluable guidance on rotoscoping and using 3D layers in After Effects. It was because of him that I got to hear the audience applaud this shot during the Revelations premiere, which was immensely flattering.

Corvus Landing - Long Shot

I worked on this shot for over two years -- rendering, revising, re-rendering, adding, subtracting, and so on. Much of my effort was dedicated to getting the smoke to look real, swapping out the sky, and lighting the Corvus. I have to give props to SciFi3D again for supplying the terrific AT-ST model.

Corvus Landing - Rear Shot

Well, now we get to see the hind end of Corvus as it settles in for a landing. Director Shane Felux bugged me to do the landing animation over and over and over until I got it right. At the time, I hated him for that, but now I think he needs a huge hug.

March, Dogs!

This is the shot where I learned about the fun (read: drudgery) and joy (read: mind-numbing tedium) of the process of rotoscoping. I applied animated masks to the footage for each actor in the foreground, which gets tricky when you have hair or bits of clothing that stick out. Lots of work for such a short shot.

Zhanna Debarks

I just have to thank Zap and Zaf for their help and ingenuity getting this thing put together. Click here to see what the raw footage looked like before I added the CG elements. By the way (ego warning), that's me to the far left, the dorky-looking guy with the rag on his head.

Overhead

And, out walks Karen as Zhanna. It can be tough to simulate lighting on a cloudy day than it is for a sunny day (at least, in my experience). I'm totally grateful for Chris Subagio's domelight script for making this kind of diffuse illumination possible for these shots.

Raux Dragged Out

Zhanna, flanked by her Dark Jedi aides, looks down at Taryn's sister Raux. While I was standing there (on the far left), I remember thinking, "Gee, I'm glad I'm not the one who has to matte out all these people and put the spaceship in the background. 'Cuz that would just suck."