First Look at "Air Strike!"

By: Andrew Bermudez

(LEGO Studios; December 9, 2012)

     The Christmas season has started for many, and with it comes Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s first-ever quadruple release! That's right. New Friends ~ and Environmental Fable, Air Strike, Animation Reel 2, and The Film School Challenge Teaser - The Power Goes Out will all be released this Friday, December 14th! To promote this big weekend, we're going to run a major promotional campaign, including a series a first look sneak peeks, which start with this one.

     To kick off the campaign, we're going to start off with a look at a film that has more or less "flown under the radar" for the last half-month, Air Strike. As the first CGI animation by Mustache Maniacs Film Co., a lot of effort is being used to make sure this film looks good. "When we were given the Maya scene file to work with, all of the models had no surfacing, with only their default gray color to suggest the shape," said Steve Brocko, head of the LEGO Studios animation department. "I absolutely hated it and demanded that before any animation was done, all of the models needed surfacing. The results are very appealing."

A fighter jet gets ready to shoot down the enemy bomber in this render by Andrew Bermudez.

     After the surfacing and lighting issue was corrected, another issue arose. "In the file, the section of land containing the munitions depot and the mountain were separate. They looked like they were floating out in space," said Steve Brocko, who also demanded that this issue also be corrected. However, beyond that, the animation portion for Air Strike was largely uneventful and very fast. Peer evaluation of the film will take place on Monday, and the film will be finalized on Tuesday. Here are a few more facts about the film:

• The film was created for MEA 135, Computer Animation and Special Effects, taught by Jeff Baker, at College of the Canyons.
• To keep the bomber, the center of the film's story, illuminated, a spotlight was constrained to the bomber, which makes it follow the bomber throughout the animation.
• The color schemes do not represent any existing military power. However, they are used as a recurring theme to immediately and clearly distinguish who is on whose side.
• When the missiles fire on the fighter jets, the truth is that the missiles attached to the wings never actually detach. Instead, the missile attached to the fighter jet turns invisible right when a separate animated missile turns visible, allowing it to fire. This technique is often used in CGI animation.
• The camera that catches the action is the only object (besides the bomb) to be animated using traditional key-frame animation. Everything else either uses motion trails, set driven key, or constraints.

     If you are not familiar with some of this terminology, these are mostly technical phrases used in Maya, though some of them are also common animation terms. Air Strike comes out December 14th.

     Next Time: Travel back in time 300 years to the island of the dodo bird with a first look at New Friends ~ An Environmental Fable.