Aramis: Do not turn your back on me, for I will fight you!
D'Artagnan: Do not fight me, for I will kill you.
D'Artagnan: Do not fight me, for I will kill you.
During the winter we wanted to escape somewhere warm and bang! - suddenly we were in the middle of a vast desert witnessing a battle between green and evil. Smoke all around us, small sand grains getting in our eyes and a groovy beat playing from somewhere behind the grass...
We had a rough idea of the story, so we focused on our main guys, giving them hats to add some more character and a detailed storyboard followed. Previz and animation were done in Maya. We also composed the original music in the early stages as we knew it had to fit the editing.
Most of the modeling was done from scratch, where we also had some fun with building our own tools, like the procedural cacti generator, but we also used some Quixel assets for the desert vegetation and rocks. After assembling the characters and the scene in Houdini the final touches were to add string and smoke simulations along with some other subtle tweaks.
