These are some of the original show and movies I was involved with early in my career and not meant to be taken too seriously. It was fun working on these and because I was given almost complete free reign to come up with creative.
I used this opportunity to try different technical animation/mograph techniques and really honed my ability to work fast and with attention to detail. All in all, fun and light and I suppose maybe meant as a showcase from an earlier era in my career.
Stuff I worked on during my very earlier years as a designer, the vast majority of this was done in vanilla C4D and isn’t meant as a technical showcase of any advanced techniques or software. But more of an archive of some broadcast packages worked on in the past.
Lavalantula
From the channel that brought you c-movie classics such as Sharknado, Sharktopus vs Pteracuda, and Flying Monkeys premiered Lavalantula as a tent-pole schlock movie for summer 2015. Lavalantula was intended to build off of Sharknado’s success and to create it’s own franchise, it wasn’t any ordinary Syfy movie but one that got a little extra love from the people at Syfy. The plot is simple: Los Angeles is under attack by a swarm of giant lava-tarantulas. Lavalantula stars three key cast members from the old classic Police Academy: Steve Guttenberg, Leslie Easterbrook and Michael Winslow.
High Moon
High Moon was intended as a TV series but the pilot ended up as a TV movie. High Moon was loosely based on John Christopher‘s The Lotus Caves, in which 2 boys on a Moon colony venture into the restricted zones to discover a sentient life form. I decided the best way to present High Moon was to emphasize the strong factionalism and international intrigue that High Moon attempts. By those means, the concept of the High Moon promo-package focused on top-down satellite imagery as a means to emphasize state espionage and to establish the lunar landscape as a tangible setting in High Moon.
A quick run-through of the scene in 3D. As you can see I didn’t need to texture the buildings as satellite recon images are mostly monochromatic so texturing wasn’t a huge issue. I was tempted to use normal/diffuse maps for the lunar surface but after several tests I decided the sculpting the landscape gave me a more realistic result.
Chiller’s Fender Bender
Independance Daysaster
A Syfy Original that’s meant as summer popcorn fare. The decision to go with a military-tinted CG package was made since (spoiler alert) the alien invasion was halted through military means. This movie package was influenced by Jose Ortiz’s Battleship title-open. The Design Director at Syfy, Calvin, designed the logo and also a few of the elements that you see on the map grid.
The intent was to highlight the high-tech nature of the conflict through a military prism as the movie centered around figuring out a way around our helplessness to a more technologically advanced foe.
Metal Hurlant Chronicles
I was honored working on a show that is connected to the man Mœbius himself. I originally envisioned creating an show package with the camera pulling back through series of doors that closed shut (think Mystery Science Theater 3000 & Get Smart), each door would represent a door you might see in each episode: a western swing door for a western episode or a heavy wooden door for an episode that takes place during the medieval era. Ultimately I settled on using the key-art because the art was good and it worked, no reason to re-invent the wheel if I have something that would work for show package.
Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda
