"Han Solo Chronicles" Remastered
I started this project back at 2017, after I publish on my Instagram a turntable of a X-Wing. This post call the attention of Matt Mickelson, director/actor from New York. He, at that time, was working on a Star Wars fan film that he recorded with his friends and daughters, basically just using a green screen in their basement. He send me a message asking if I could render a few ships fly overs for him to put in his film. At that point he was only using pre-made 3d animations that he founded on Youtube, which was not so good. After seeing what he had done I got very excited and ask if I could help him more. The film had a lot of soul and I judged that I would learn a lot while working on it.
The fan film had in total 26 minutes, and all shots had or an 3D Environment as background or was completely full 3D. Has you can imagine, it was a lot of work! I end up spending a few years working on it, using my (rare) spare time and weekends. I tried to help has much has I could, trying to find creative solutions to step up the post production of the film.
Has you will see in this page, I use several workflows. The most difficult was on the hero shots, the full 3d ones, where I had to create the whole scene and render with a realistic look. For the digital backgrounds I mainly use the Mos Eisley UE4 fan made project, the devs was kindly enough to let us use their environment has our background. And I end up also using some frames from the original films with some small modifications.
But after a few years trying to finish it, work and other personal projects end up taking too much of mine time and until today I was not able to finish it. That was a amazing project, I learn so much on it! And I really hope that I can finish it one day.
In this page I will share some of the scenes that I work, while trying to share a bit of the project post production workflow.
To start, this is the original version. All made by Matt Mickelson. As you can see the film does not have the best post-production but it has A LOT of soul!
This one here is the first trailer that Matt edited using some of the new post production scenes that I had made.
This shot of the Boba Fett's Slave One landing on Tatooine was one of the shots that I end up adding in the edit.
The pebbles and smoke simulation was all done in Maya. It took forever to simulate the smoke on my old machine. Unfortunately I never had time to finish the environment for this shot.
Work in progress with a environment place holder.
This is one of the first shots of the film. Here you can see the first version done by Matt and the new dmp background and comp that I made. Of course is not the greatest comp ever, but I had 26 minutes of film with hundreds of shots to work with.
This is a fun quick shot that I work doing the comp an the laser effect. Background from the Mos Eisley fan film project.
Here you can see more the Mos Eisley Unreal project that I use has a background in the first sequence of the short film.
This was another green screen shot that I end using the Unreal Mos Eisley project.
This is another full 3D scene that I end up adding to the film. The model of the Falcon I found on the internet, I end up remaking the textures and lookdev. The background is from the Mos Eisley Unreal environment.
This is one of the shots that I end up using a frame from The Last Hope has background.
The original frame from The Last Hope.
This was another shot from the Tatooine scape scene. This is the first comp, without grade. Here the planet needed to look more dry.
This was one of the shots that I tried to remastered from the original animation. I end up not having time to finish it.
This, personally, is one of my favourite shots of the film. One of the few that is almost 100% done.
This was the first version of the shot above, much more boring right?
Another cool shot that I like a lot. Rendering this Star Destroyers, four years ago, was a pain. In this shot I end moving the ships in 2D.
This is a bit of comp that I made to make the Star Destroyer a bit more complex.
Another shot that I finish the 3D but never had time to render with all the passes.
This is the original shot made by Matt.
This is the new animation that I made, This is just the playblast in Maya using proxies.
The slap comp using just one frame. Again another one that I never manage to render.
Same thing, frame from The Last Hope with some extra stuff over it.
This is another shot that I end up using the background from The Last Hope.
This shot it was also a work in progress. Environment was almost ready but was missing animation and render.
This was the first version of the Cloudy City halls, which in the short film was in control of the Empire.
One more shot that I did not manage to render. Each frame, with my old computer, took about 40 minutes to render using Arnold. The model was super heavy.
This shot is right after the Cloudy City escape, is where the Falcon is captured by the Empire.
One of the last shots of the film. This is only the first slap comp that I had time to make.
This was a video for a crowdfunding project that Matt did for the film,