Mission 4 : Secrets to Codex | Animated Mini film

spaceship trailer 3d animation motion graphics after effects animation motion design 3D Space Battle

Mission 4: The Secrets to CODEX,

This is a personal project that I always wanted to do for a long time and this semester it all aligned well with my schedule to make time for this high-stakes space adventure animation film involving interstellar travel, discovery of new civilizations, and the retrieval of a powerful artifact known as the Codex and how the battles for the power of universe can lead to it's destruction as well.

My Process:

Pre-production involved conceptualization which was putting all my ideas and stitching and developing the story, characters, and environment settings and further picking the key points in the story to make a intriguing trailer film out of it. The pre-production process further involved creating visual storyboards to outline how the trailer is sequenced and figure out the key frames and timestamps required for the set of animation to do.

Production work involved using softwares such as Blender and Procreate to create 3D models of the environment, characters and other necessary props and models required to build the world I envisioned. For the most of the renders I had to use Eeeve engine to save time, though it may have reduced the quality of the work, it's to a level where it can presented so I was happy with that. I also had to visit a bunch of youtube tutorials which I'll be citing at the end to learn more on getting the cinematic effects to environment which further helps in giving realism to the models. The models were uploaded to Mixamo and further was auto rigged so that I could animate the movements more conveniently to bring characters and objects to life in the scenes. I was also willing to experiment and strike a balance between the traditional camera shots and adding more flavour by experimenting on different shots through the camera to bring the scenes more elevation which you can evidently see in the fight scene that happens at Proxima Centauri.

Post-production predominantly involved editing the work by combining the scenes in a coherent flow that matches the storyboard and the edit was possible through Adobe After Effects. After effects also helped me converting some of the raw footages into a much more high defined cinematic shot through color correction and color grading presets available in it. The trailer's mood also changes as the intensity elevates we switch from the calmer blue tone to alarming orange tint. Selection of music was also time consuming, one thing I would've done differently was to choose the music first and then sit with the storyboard but eventually I found one of the royalty free trailer music that fit well with intensity of my storyboard and I had to make minor tweaks in the renders and the edit table to make sure it syncs to an extent with the background music. Oh yes, I had to give my voiceover as the protagonist although I would've loved for someone with more gravitas to have dubbed for the trailer, I am proud of my work and the script and hoping to improve on the work when I start to make a short film out of this out. Now I'll post below the Youtube Link for you to see and let me know how it all turned out: (Make sure that you see it in 1080p for the best experience)

Tools Used:

Blender, Procreate, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Mixamo