ROCKET LEAGUE - “TAKE YOUR SHOT”
Epic Games approached Evil Eye Pictures with another challenge - design and produce a :60 (that became a :90!) second cinematic in Unreal Engine to highlight a huge announcement for ROCKET LEAGUE - the massively successful esport game from Psyonix is going free-to-play this Summer with cross-platform progression.
Functioning as both the agency and production company, we brought former Pixar creative Saschka Unseld to direct. Saschka was one of the first directors at Pixar to accomplish photo-realistic CG with ‘Blue Umbrella’ - and as it turned out he had just started obsessively playing the game that features racing cars playing soccer a couple of months ago.
Besides playing soccer with cars, Saschka is also known for leading action sequences in Pixar's ‘Cars’ and crafting lyrical immersive shorts like ‘Dear Angelica’ and ‘Lost.” Saschka’s background as a character animator as well as someone who understands the ins-and-outs of new production approaches, like those needed to create in Unreal Engine, made for a great collaboration. We all wear a lot of different hats at Evil Eye, and Saschka’s natural collaborative approach fit right in.
The spot starts with Octane, a newbie and the game’s hero. Octane appears timid at first but teams up with Fennec, an experienced partner, to defeat the tough brawler Dominus and a newly-minted, fiery-wheeled, Peregrine. In classic showdown, spaghetti western style, car tricks meet special effects meet over-the-top goal explosions resulting in a spot that has fun with the game's origins and is rendered in a sophisticated, photoreal way that could only be accomplished in Unreal Engine.
Psyonix wanted to keep veteran players excited while also inspiring new players to join. In our treatment, we pitched the idea of Car-Fu, a kind of car ballet that has its roots in a bit of Evil Eye legacy - we supervised a few sequences on Speed Racer for Warner Bros.
With car ballet and action sequences in mind, illustrator Jonathan Case joined the team to bring Saschka’s script to life. We tapped into our best-of and global network and soon had an extensive ‘look book’ of paint-overs, reference, color, design and targets for the entire project.
We mastered animation in Maya and used an FBX pipeline into Unreal for animation, cameras, and assets. Layout, materials, blueprints, lighting, look-development and overall design all happened in Unreal Engine 4.25 giving us the ability to iterate quickly while seeing it all with real-time raytracing.
Unreal allowed us to build the world, place cameras as we would on set, but with the freedom to change anything we want; move the camera, change the lens, lighting, rearrange the edit to see how well it all plays together. We thought more in terms of footage, and not shots. That process and real results happen hour-by-hour and not over weeks and months. By the end, we were rendering the entire :90 second spot every evening, in time for morning dailies with the crew. We took on ftrack to leverage web-based, synchronized playback which was key to achieving drawings and notes while every team member worked remotely.
Along with a number of new announcements, the spot is available on the ROCKET LEAGUE YouTube Channel.
CREDITS
AGENCY & STUDIO | Evil Eye Pictures
DIRECTOR | Saschka Unseld
CO-FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR | Dan Rosen
PRODUCER | Yovel Schwartz
CG SUPERVISOR | Stephen DeLuca
CINEMATOGRAPHER & ANIMATOR | Euisung Lee
CO-FOUNDER, FINISHING & DI: Matt McDonald
LEAD ANIMATOR | Ian Braunner
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR | Anthony Enos
LEAD DESIGNER | Conor Grebel
FX LEAD: Tobin Jones
FX LEAD: John Helms
FX PRODUCER: Tracey Dispensa
COORDINATOR: Nat Dominguez-Jacobs
ASST. COORDINATOR: Humphrey Cheng
STORYBOARDS | Jonathan Case
The score and sound fx were designed by Charles Deenen and Tim Gedemer of Source Sound with supervision from Mike Ault at Psyonix. Music credit for ‘Good Times Roll’ to GRiZ x Big Gigantic (Audio).