“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.

Animation / Video Overview:


Type: