Mystical Haida is a fan art project; a journey to the Haida tribe (Canada) through the eyes of Amara, a young girl who, while on a hunting trip, is surprised by a magical and unexpected event that she will never forget.
With this animated short film, my goal is to pay homage to the movie “Prey” while exploring the latest cinematic capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, using the iconic Predator character.
This time I wanted to challenge my own animation skills by focusing on creating realistic characters with convincing body and facial movements.
The sets were built using assets from the Unreal Marketplace, with a special focus on Mawi´s props and Quixel Megascans assets to ensure convincing realism. In addition, I have extensively adapted and modified the animations available in the Unreal Marketplace to meet the specific needs of the characters and scenes.
Some animations were done using the Plask Motion body motion capture system; however, each animation went through a thorough post-production process, which included clean-up and enhancements in a separate sequencer, before being applied to the final characters.
For the facial animations, I used tools such as LiveLink Face on the iPhone in order to capture precise expressions and gestures for the metahuman characters.
As the creator of this project, I worked on every stage of production: from the creation of the script and storyboard, through the modelling of the characters and assets (Maya,Substance 3D Painter & Quixel), to the design of the sets, animations, lighting, camera layouts and renders with Unreal Engine.
In addition, I undertook the video and sound editing (Premiere Pro) process.
For me, Mystical Haida represents the dedicated effort put forth to explore the creative and technical capabilities of present-day animation, thanks to technological advances in both software and hardware.