Short Cuts: The Last Train

Things go bump in the night in this recent short from the Animation Hub

The Last Train is the first production from the Animation Hub – a collaboration between animation studio Giant Creative and the staff and students of the Irish School of Animation at Ballyfermot College of Further Education (BCFE) and the Graphics Vision and Visualisation group at Trinity College Dublin.

The film, which was sponsored by the Irish Film Board and the Science Foundation Ireland, tells the story of a train passenger who is pursued by a mysterious force in the dead of night. The concept for the story was initially developed by the Giant Creative artists. It was then refined over a couple of days with input and feedback from the entire production team.

With the plot decided, work began on storyboarding. “After working out the story orally, we began visualising the sequences in thumbnail drawings,” says one of Giant Creative’s and the film’s directors Ben Harper. “This allowed us to quickly explore different angles in order to find the best composition for each shot.” With a clearer idea of content, production got underway. But the pressure was on from day one, with the team working to a three-month deadline, and incorporating software and techniques that they had no previous experience in.

“It was our first venture having motion capture in our pipeline,” says Harper. “We struggled in the beginning to come up with a narrative that had a place for both mo-cap and hand-keyed computer animation. We always thought we’d make the story work first, and then fit the technology around that base, so we approached things in that manner.”

You can read more about the technical process behind The Last Train in issue 152 of 3D World magazine.

Posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 at 10:00 am under Shorts, Showcase. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: 3D animated short, 3D animation, Short Cuts, The Last Train