![]() If any of these were absent, a lot of people wouldn’t even know what was wrong with what they were watching, but it would just feel empty. Harry101UK pours through libraries of sounds and makes the silent void of an SFM vibrant the crunches of footsteps, the creaking of the barn as it gets destroyed, the whir of the projector. Incidentally, this also implies that at some point in history, someone was desperately wracking their brain, trying to figure out how to make sound effects while cooking breakfast. For example, in a lot of hollywood movies, the sound of rain in the background is actually the sound of bacon sizzling. Using the “correct” sounds are often surprisingly unsatisfying to the audience. Often, sound designers have to get creative. Harry101UK’s job was to find sounds for all the things that happen in the SFM, synchronize them accurately, and weave them carefully into the background of the movie. When a sound designer does his job well, the audience most likely won’t notice it at all. Harry101UK did the sound design, which is typically an under appreciated art. “I feel as though body language is important, it can sometimes say more than words” Slipping into Uncanny Valley (a term used for when things look almost right, but are just wrong enough that the final result is oddly creepy to look at) is a common pitfall, but CobaltGemini deftly steers characters we know and love through that valley and out the other side. “You try to keep things true to the character rather than true to yourself” Slowly, CobaltGemini grafts movement onto them, making the Demoman sit with his shoulders and arms at just the right angle to show his annoyance with the the dreadful 3D glasses, or making the interaction between the Heavy and Medic fit the characters, but subtle enough that it doesn’t scream “I AM EMOTING AND ACTING, ALL AT ONCE” at you. It takes many painstaking hours, starting with lifeless bodies and the vaguest of sketches of how the models might be placed in the environment. The art of animation is not for the faint of heart. The animation was primarily done by CobaltGemini, who takes stiff and somewhat clunky computer generated models and gently breathes life into them. “At that point it was just ‘we need something alien themed’.and that was it” ![]() CobaltGemini, the SFM lead, was introduced to Ronin along with the rest of the Lil’ Guardian Pyro team and Ronin was happy to give the team full creative freedom. In actuality, It took 6 people several months to create the final SFM short that announced Invasion. If I told you to create 3 minutes of high quality SFM - and I mean, good, cutting edge SFM animation here - how long would you guess it would take? A week? Two weeks? Four minutes? Twelve lightyears? One hundred and eighty! I’m just shouting numbers now. If you have seen it, then take a look at the Visual Effects Breakdown by Harry101 below If you have yet to watch the Great work done by the SFM team, head over to the official landing page for the update and watch it for yourself. The 30 second teaser became a 3 minute trailer-style short movie with an in-movie movie, custom made props and particle effects, and even its own original score.īut this vast expansion of the project meant the short took significantly longer than originally expected, and the Cosmetic Conquest Contest - with a hard, pre-established date - was launched without the short and the movie was instead saved for the launch of the update. The SFM team blew everyone away, offering a short movie that had a scope far beyond what had been originally planned. Originally, the movie was supposed to generate interest in the mapping contest by being released before said contest. When Bang! came onboard with the project he introduced Ronin to the Lil’ pyro team, who created the short for Invasion.
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