Black Future 88 Cinematic Intro

Thanks to Mads Broni I had the opportunity to be the lead 2d character animator and designer for this awesome cinematic for Black Future 88 by Good Shepherds Entertainment. (Be sure to check out that game, it's such an adrenalin rush!!) Had a lot of fun putting this together with Marguerite Dumans as additional animator and Jonghyun Jung as FX animator! And Mads working his magic on the backgrounds and post. Great work guys!

Design and Look

Since we had a tight deadline of only 3 weeks for the entire cinematic, we had a couple of challenges we needed to overcome. First I needed to make 4 redesigns of the characters who were going to play a role in the video. The client provided me with these 4 pixelart characters and various of gameplay footage. I instantly had ideas for the characters, since the gameplay looked really interesting and I was super hyped up. 

With the deadline in mind I started designing the characters with a low detail level. It wasn't quite what the client was looking for, but it did put us in a direction! So fortunately I got feedback really fast and they also provided reference images which led to the final designs.

Animation Process

While designing the characters and weapons, I already planned out the entire video in thumbnails. So when the designs were approved, we could immediately start animating. I knew that in a couple of days another animator Marguerite would come on board to do cleanup and where needed fill in the inbetweens. But since there is no time to get used to the drawing style and the character designs, I needed to be really thorough with my rough animations. Because after finishing all the roughs I would be revising Marguerites work and also jump in on the cleanup and coloring.

Finalizing the characters.

After clean up and coloring was done, I was also starting to feel the fatigue. Luckily my best friends were there to motivate me and take care of me! When you can work while hanging out with your friends, you know they're the best. Thanks guys! But there was only one step left in the process: finalizing the characters. That meant: shading, highlighting and setting things up so that Mads at post could work his magic. I wanted to do this step myself to make sure it would get the look I envisioned while I was doing the rough animations. During this time My girlfriend Lynyster and my bro MrBrander came by my house and helped me out a bit! Thanks a lot guys.

The End

In the end I worked my ass off, but it was really worth it. I'm grateful to working with such talented people and having so much great people in my environment.