Serendipity
A visal Development
http://serendipity-project.com/Teaser.html
A visal Development
http://serendipity-project.com/Teaser.html
The project “Serendipity”
Serendipityis a bachelor project that deals with the creation of fictitious characters ina fictitious universe.
The story isabout two very contrasting protagonists, which are bound together by destiny.
This coincidentalencounter is also described by the Project title 'Serendipity', which means'happy accident' or 'pleasant surprise'; specifically, "the accident offinding something good or useful without looking for it”. *
The visual developmentdelivers the foundation and the initial point for a broad variation ofconversion possibilities.
An art book wasestablished which documents the complex process of creation.
Additionally anapproximately 90-second teaser in a 16:9 format was created to tease the audiencein anticipation of the Serendipity project.
Timo Peter wasresponsible for the visual development of the characters from 2D to 3D an forthe creation of the background story.
Sebastian Reichhold wasin charge for the visual effects, the lighting and the rendering of the Teaser.
Characters
The idea wasto create a unique Universe with a basic but exciting story and deep andinteresting characters that the recipient can identify with. The Main focus wason the two protagonists. I wanted to create two very contrasting personalitieseach with their own needs, problems and inner conflicts. Furthermore I intendedfor them to be forced to work together, giving them the possibility to overcometheir prejudices and develop their character through each other and theirjourney.
I wanted them both to question their lives andthe incidences around them.
Bothcharacters were designed to be more that you see, since I wanted the recipientto discover a whole different person from what you see at the first sight.
The research was a very important processduring the preproduction. Not only to find ideas and inspiration for thecharacters and the plot, but moreover to define a look for the project.
Furthermorethe research process was not limited to characters but also on settings,environments, vehicles, guns, antagonists and more.
The Story
The wholeStory takes place about 400 years into the future and describes the coincidenceand the common way of two very different individuals.
On the onehand there is the protagonist Titus ( T2S) who is the result of a geneticallyexperiment to create a hybrid Super soldier called Supramiles Project. (Supramiles: Supra = Latin for inferior and miles for soldier).
This project was found and executed by thebiggest armor concern in human history: P.T. Industries. The company actsthrough its financial independence and its huge influence autonomous of thegreatest possible extent.
Through theirvery resistant skin and their extremely imperishable dermal back armor, theyalso have the Nickname “Titanbacks”.
To controlthese ‘Super Soldiers’ and to keep them mentally stable they have to get animplant, which is a synthetic blocker of the orbito frontal Cortex. Thisblocker suppresses the brain areas, which evoke empathy and moral perception.
Moreover the“Supras” (short form of Supramiles) get a memory erase after each mission tokeep them mentally stable, since they have to accomplish a lot of violenttasks.
Those controlfunctions do not work properly on Titus because they implicate that he slowlybegins to develop a moral consciousness and starts to question his orders.
Thesecircumstances lead to the fact that Titus is about to get discarded. For thisreason he is being sent to an orbital arrest facility where he will wait for hisexecution.
TodorBenchev, a very rough, ignorant and brutal Soldier; got consigned with thetermination of Titus.
Then, on theother hand, we have got the female protagonist Cat (Cathrine M. Morning).
Cat wasraised in an achievement oriented, military family and never received neitherlove nor affection.
Theexpectations of her parents especially the ones of her father were limited togood results and success.
Because ofthat Cat begins to develop into a problematic child and is starting to offend otherpeople. She gets negative attention because of her behavior and the way shedresses.
Her rebellionand aversion against her circumstances and her parents are obviously expressedby aggressive contumaciousness and also by a violent behavior against otherbeings.
An incidenton a military academy leads to a hospitalization into a mental institution byher parents; reason being Cat broke the nose of her instructor.
At thisfacility she gets into contact with a psychologist who is infiltrated by theDiaspora, a rebelling Organization that fights for the rights of the weak andall kinds of grievance. Especially P.T. Industries is in the focus of dieDiaspora since their criminal and corrupt intrigue.
Trough theDiaspora, Cat sees her way of doing something meaningful and fights for therights of the weak so she becomes an activist herself. She cuts off theconnection to her past and dedicates her life to the Diaspora.
The leadingcouple Rob and Marie became mentors to Cat and also her familiar substitutes.
UnfortunatelyCat is feeling worse since she left her little sister back with their Familyand so she plans to take her away from their parents as soon as possible.
An attack atthe headquarters of the Diaspora by the Titanbacks, caused by P.T. Industries, madeCats attachment figure that Rob and Marie got killed.
Cat swears toget revenge for their death and plans an assault on P.T. Industries.
During thismission she gets caught and almost all of the Diaspora members that followedher are getting killed. She gets conveyed to the same orbital arrest facilityin which Titus is waiting for his execution. They finally meet since they gotarrested in the same cellblock.
After theDiaspora has tried to free Cat and the rest of the imprisoned members, Cat andTitus both have the chance of escaping. To survive they are forced to depend oneach other and have to work together to survive and to not get caught!
Production/Technology
The processof the character establishment generally started with 2d sketches that wereeither drawn traditionally with a pencil or digital in Photoshop.
Thesesketches were colored in Photoshop and several design variations were made todefine what works visually best for the particular character. During thisprocess the characters more and more developed until they achieved their finalappearance.
After thelook was defined the characters were converted in 3D. Either as a fullyretopologised 3d Model with an UV Layout and texture or as a bust-sculpt. Whileall the modeling work was done in Maya or 3ds max the sculpting was done inZbrush exclusively. The UV Layout was done in Maya and for the texturing I usedZbrush as also Photoshop.
For theteaser we decided to create a setting which was manageable to produce in theshort time period of the project an also contributes his part to theStory. We wanted to give the recipientan insight of the fictional universe in moving images. So we decided to showTitus in an environment that delivers some information about the universe andhim.
The Hybridtank room seemed the perfect location for us to show Titus origins since itreflects the complexity of the whole Idea behind the character. The room is thebirthplace of all Titanbacks and the tanks that are arranged on the wallsaround the reactor are the objects they get breed in. In addition to that wewanted to leave it to imagination of the customer to create his own littlestory of how Titus got there and what his intention is.
After all theassets for the Scene were modeled we blocked the whole scene an arranged theassets as well as the characters.
Thecinematographic Idea behind the shots was to make the consumer wonder what thepreservers are fighting against. So we decided the reveal the climax by showingTitus at the end of the teaser and fade out with a very wide shot to reveal althe events that happened in all the different areas of the Scene!
The visual effectsplayed a big role in the teaser because they support and boost the mood of thewhole scene. All the effects in the teaser were created in particle-flow,fume-fx and Krakatoa. For the lighting a linear lighting workflow was used toachieve a realistic lighting
The Rendering was done in Maya Mental Ray withseveral render layers to retain the possibility of adjusting each layer individuallyin the process of the postproduction.
ThePostproduction was done in Nuke where all Layers were combined. Colorcorrection and several layer adjustments like Sharpness, depth of field; glowand so on were done too to boost the look of the final movie.
http://serendipity-project.com/Teaser.html
