“Transformers: The Game” by Blur Studio
Conference:
SIGGRAPH Video Review:
Track:
- 08
Title:
- Transformers: The Game
Length:
- 2:04
Company / Institution / Agency:
- Blur Studio
Description:
For “Transformers: The Game,” Activision called on Blur to create one high-powered, montage-style open and two alternate endings for their much-anticipated game release. Good and evil battle for ultimate control in an energized edit featuring cool transforming robots, edgy cityscapes, and filmic lighting and compositing.
When you have giant robots transforming, flying through cities, running on rooftops, and generally beating the hell out of each other, the creative challenges aren’t that tough. The hardest part is keeping your own creativity somewhat in check, so you don’t go way over budget. Technically Speaking, the Transformers themselves are very complicated. The actual animations of each transformation were a significant hurdle to jump. With little to no reference from the feature film,Blur had to animate most transformations from scratch. Most of the characters were comprised of hundreds of moving parts, so rigging and animating them efficiently was quite a challenge. They Became so heavy and cumbersome with complexity that Blur had to develop new methods to handoff the animation data from the character animators to the lighting artists.
Additional Contributors:
CG Supervisors: Dave Wilson, Iain Morton
Animation Supervisor: Leo Santos
Creative Director: Tim Miller
Producer: Mandy Sim
Executive Producer: Al Shier
FX Supervisor: Kirby Miller
Layout: David Nibbellin, Derron Ross
Modeling: Shaun Absher, Heikki Anttila, Corey Butler, Marek Denko, Kris Kaufman, Barrett Meeker, Brandon Riza, Daniel Trbovic
Rigging: Steve Guevara, Bryan Hillestad, Mattias Jervill, Malcolm Thomas-Gustave
Transformation Rigging and Animation: Heikki Anttila, Remi McGill
Animation: Jean-Dominique Fievet, Jeff Fowler, Brent Homman, Marlon Nowe, Derron Ross, Peter Starostin, Adam Swaab, Gus Wartenberg, Brian Whitmire
Lighting and Compositing: Heikki Anttila, Corey Butler, Kris Kaufman, Barrett Meeker
FX: Seung Jae Lee, Gus Wartenburg, Attila Zalanyi
Mocap: Chris Bedrosian
Mocap Prep and Clean-Up: Ryan Girard, Jeff Weisend
Character Technical Supervisor: Jon Jordan
Character Modeling QC Supervisor: Ian Joyner
Concept Design: Hugo Martin, Sean McNally, Chuck Wojtkiewicz
Matte Painter: Hugo Martin
Title Animation: Adam Swaab
Production Assistant: Amanda Powell
Tools and Scripts: Diego Garcia, Eric Hulser, Remi McGill
Programming & Systems Administration: Duane Powell, Paul Huang, Matt Newell, Abe Shelton
Production: Blur Studio, Inc.
