Making "AlBot" Pt. 7 - Final Product (Patreon)

Since the livestream, I've been building the rest of the CG assets, laying out shots, animating, [miGRAtiNg tO a nEw coMpuTEr], rendering, compositing and mixing sound. And here's the finished video!

Presenting it above in square format, but will post the vertical version shortly at the "early access" tier.

Some final production details:

I textured the robot in Substance Painter. I think the clash of super basic shapes and realistic textures weirdly works.

I cobbled together a table, photo-scanned the wrench prop with Polycam (so it could be on the floor after I drop it). Joey made the console with the button & I tweaked it.

I blocked out a primitive layout of the lab...

And Joey turned it into this!

All these things were dynamically linked into the different 3D scenes, so that if something was adjusted on a model, it would update in all the shots. Because all the camera angles were already lined up and everything was modeled to scale, it was almost fun putting the shots together.

I used some tricks to help with interactive lighting, such as making dummy objects of the characters and projecting the footage onto them.

After everything was rendered, I comped things together in After Effects and did a final color grade in Resolve.

The timing with the animatic is so close, I was able to use that sound mix as a starting point to make the final one. As in all my videos, I cleaned up the dialogue and added a bunch of sound effects. The stock music was basically left untouched.

I think the whole thing came out pretty cool. But you be the judge!

After working on this elaborate short, explicitly designed for a vertical video aspect ratio, what I have learned is... I still kinda hate it! 😝