THE RONIN -- an Unreal Engine Short Film

Films are never completed, only abandoned.

I would have finished this months ago, but I got a job. Wonderful! But demanding. This sat on the shelf until a week ago. And I got another job! Wonderful! But the writing is on the wall: if I don't put this out warts and all, it wont happen for another six months. So here it is!

Many reasons for doing this.

1) I wanted learn @unrealengine but I found myself opening the program, pulling up a tutorial, watching it, and closing Unreal. I needed to force myself into asking questions and then finding answers. I came up with a premise for a short and started working. I hit walls, looked for solutions. Rinse, repeat. Now, I wouldn't say that I "know" Unreal, but I’ve come a long way. Thank god for tutorials from ‪@WilliamFaucher‬ , ‪@filmriot‬ , ‪@pwnisher‬ and others.

2) I have many talented friends, colleagues, and people I follow putting out sword stuff: ‪@OfficialAaronToney‬ , ‪@dandargancarter4022‬ , ‪@ianu123‬ , ‪@AJLStunts‬ , ‪@shabyvideos‬ , ‪@wanwanzzz‬ ... HEY! I like swords! And ninjas! That lent itself to...

3) I wanted to work on non-verbal storytelling and play at some of shooting styles of my talented friends, colleagues, and people I follow: ‪@GregRementer‬ , ‪@RivenX3i‬ , ‪@vjvlad‬ and others... while maintaining my own vibe (I think?).

4) I've been privileged to be on set with amazing DP’s, and have quietly watched. Unreal’s appeal: realtime lighting. I might be a terrible student, but observing Erik Messerschmidt , Robrecht Heyvart , Carmen Cabana, Matt J. Lloyd, Jas Shelton, Anastas Michos and Jules O'Loughlin paint with light was huge.

Anticipating questions:

About six weeks.

I didn't model much from scratch, just a few things. Most of this was quite heavily altered, but started as purchased or free models.

I played all the characters using my ‪@RokokoMotion‬ smartsuit pro. This was the most challenging part: coming up with choreography for multiple characters, keeping it all in my head, playing each one, and then combining the takes. I could have certainly called on any number of talented performers to help -- and I will when I revisit this stuff for other projects in the future -- but for this, I thought it would be fun to say I was everyone. It's about 85% custom mocap, 10% canned mocap, and 5% hand animated.

Hope you enjoy!