The Unexpected (2002)
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The Unexpected began in 2000 as an introductory movie for a hypothetical video game called Terra 9, that a friend Aaron Nash and I had designed some time ago. I had no clear idea of where it would go, and I succeeded in creating only two clips, the initial "chainroom" image and the shot of the missile-loading tubes (right). I spent a very long time constructing those two simple shots in Ray Dream Studio (modeling in Rhino 3D 1) and they took almost a month to render on my 200mhz Compaq. Seeing that this movie was unrealistic, I gave up.
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I resumed working on it again later, figuring I'd completed two shots and it would be shame to waste them! This time, I got a little further. I worked on the scenes within the "spaceship" at the beginning. It was at this time that I decided this movie would follow the course of a missile as it traveled from a spaceship, the Calypso, to a desolate planet. I created the interior scenes of Captain William Harris' quarters (left.) Seeing as I had not abandoned the original association with the game, I chose a very non-scifi look for the cabin. I decided to create a musty, book-filled and wood-paneled office. Unfortunately, this was quite taxing on my poor computer and the scene with the books, shown left, could not even be previewed on my computer, as the complexity of the geometry overwhelmed the unstable disaster that was Ray Dream Studio. So, I abandoned the movie again.
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Later, under the guidance of my awesome art teacher, Mr. Flinn, I took this project up again, this time with a specific goal and an intent to finish it. I first set about to create the story and finalize it. I created a storyboard that looked almost exactly like the finished piece, save only one part. I had originally intended to include a "dream" sequence in which the mysterious hand (and eye in this version) imagined the supposed missile impact. As you can see to the right, I had even practiced setting up the impact to the best of my abilities. However, September 11th made me reconsider this scene. I thought it would be perceived as tasteless so soon after a real building blew up, so I canned this scene, rather technically difficult anyways. At this point, I had finished all of the scenes up through the point where the missile was about to leave the ship.
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Ray Dream was being pushed to its limits by this project, and the company was dying. So, I moved on, purchasing a piece of software called Realsoft 3D right in the middle of the project. I did my best to learn it as fast as possible and progressed with the work. All of the scenes from the point where the missile leaves the ship onwards were created in Realsoft 3D (with the exception of the still landscapes,) which I could barely operate. Hence why the visual style changes so abruptly. However, as some people prefer to view it as an artistic decision, I will not argue. :) Realsoft suddenly allowed me to accomplish all of the effects that I could not complete in Ray Dream, a problem that had been looming over my head for quite some time. So, I finished the animation using Realsoft. Then I set about doing the editing, which I had never done before. I edited the animation and recorded sound using my cheezy desktop mic, compressed it to DivX, and called it a day. The end.