HAPPY HALLOTWIN!

We are thrilled to share a first glimpse of what our TWeam has been working on with award-winning director and friend of TWIN Edward Andrews. We made this concept in just over a week, entirely in-house, from choreography to motion capture through rigging, lookdev, animation, compositing and final edit.

When we took the dancing skeleton idea to Ed, we wanted to leave the classic (and somewhat expected) Halloween dance behind and dive into the world of breakdancing, with a retro sci-fi look inspired by Tron. Ed developed the concept for the full short (stay tuned!), along with the script, storyboard and concept board.

Next, we brought in professional breakdancer Kwan Chan for a full body motion capture session in central London, directed remotely by Ed from North America and on the ground by our very own Theo Facey.

Once we ingested the footage of Kwan’s performance, our Technology Consultant Jamie Briens developed a custom monocular performance capture tool. It enabled us to track the mocap by closely estimating the poses from the footage captured by our camera. Traditional mocap with a mocap suit wasn’t possible due to the amount of contact between Kwan’s body and the ground, which posed issues with the markers. Lead Technical Artist, Mateusz Matejczyk built the rig and skeleton which Senior Animator Max Tyrie took, along with the tracked mocap, into Maya to refine and perfect every move of our breakdancing skeleton. Meanwhile, Lookdev Artist Javier Blanco Ruiz built the look of the skeleton and its surroundings, paying extra attention to lighting and texture. Through multiple iterations, he perfected the retro sci-fi glow and reflections that complement Mateusz’s rig and Max’s animation, and give additional depth to the sequence. Joe Stratford handled compositing, Andre Wallace assisted with the logo animation as well as the final cut. Theo led the TWeam as VFX Supervisor on this project, while Ed provided creative direction throughout, sharing feedback with the team in regular dailies.

This concept is just a taste of a bigger and exciting project we’re developing with Ed which we can’t wait to share with you when it’s ready. It is a testament to the craftsmanship, creativity and agility of our fantastic TWeam.

We are incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished so far. Enjoy and stay tuned for part two!