3d Art and Animation by Stephen Dowdy
Lego Matrix (2007)
The classic 'lobby shootout' scene from The Matrix, as performed by the classic toy (with a slight twist at the end). In Lightwave, I attempted to retain the 'look and feel' of Lego in the modelling and animation. For example the arms only pivot at the shoulders and wrist while the legs only bend at the hips. Also all the props are intended to look like they're made from Lego pieces. It took around four months altogether, a lot of time watching the original movie frame by frame to get the timings correct. I cut out the part where Neo opens his coat after being challenged by the security guard simply because I couldn't figure out an elegant way of doing the coat in Lego.
The bullet holes in the walls are actually a bit of a cheat. They're not really in the walls. What I did was create a sphere, delete the top two-thirds and then flip the normals so I was left with a bowl. I placed this against the wall where I wanted the bullet hole to appear, set it so that it didn't cast a shadow (leaving 'self shadowing' on) and then animated the dissolve channel so that it appeared at the appropriate moment - obscured by a shower of particles. This did mean that all the bullet holes look identical but that worked for the stylised look I was after for this particular animation. I did have to be careful with the placement of holes close to the corners of the walls and the technique obviously fails if the camera moves too much.
I used AfterEffects for some colour correction and edited it all together with Premiere.
The bullet holes in the walls are actually a bit of a cheat. They're not really in the walls. What I did was create a sphere, delete the top two-thirds and then flip the normals so I was left with a bowl. I placed this against the wall where I wanted the bullet hole to appear, set it so that it didn't cast a shadow (leaving 'self shadowing' on) and then animated the dissolve channel so that it appeared at the appropriate moment - obscured by a shower of particles. This did mean that all the bullet holes look identical but that worked for the stylised look I was after for this particular animation. I did have to be careful with the placement of holes close to the corners of the walls and the technique obviously fails if the camera moves too much.
I used AfterEffects for some colour correction and edited it all together with Premiere.