Believe It Or Not

The Video Game Trailer

After about six months of working after hours at home we're finally finishing up our Unity 3D game, Believe.  This is our first foray into video gaming.  This game is built for a proprietary tactical simulation machine that largely in use in gun ranges and the like.

We had very limited resources when we began this game so we tried to develop concepts which would play well with our limitations.  So we went with a Sci-fi Post-Apocalyptic theme.  You are fighting a clone army we call The Mutuals.  That way we only needed a single actor to play all our bad guys.

A solid eight hour shoot and we'd worn our actor (Cougar Littlefield) out completely.  He was covered in sweat.  It was more like a type of eight hour workout with a break for lunch.  You can see him below as he runs out from a covered position and fires on the player before running back.  Then a run out and get shot up.

Costuming

The riot gear uniform was made of costume elements we already had as well as some new ones.  I had previously made the helmet out of a sports helmet I had covered with carbon fiber adhesive vinyl.  It was a bit of work to seamlessly cover the curve without creating folds or bunching.  I then added a visor from a separate helmet and it fit our actor perfectly.

I already owned a full body harness for film making wire work so that was great.  Traditional knee and elbow pads are universal so that was pretty straight forward.  The gloves were a great find and are actually a type of work gloves that were simply on the shelf at Home Depot.  I knew the moment I spotted them that they were the ones, they have such a fantastic rubber detail texture. 

I already owned the very fun DKNY shirt that has an almost sci-fi texture to it with a high collar.  A few more well placed sports pads and he was ready for business.  Of course we needed that extra special something which would give him an inhuman quality.  This was really one of our only major costume expenses.... black full sclera contact lenses.  It was a bit creepy and that's exactly what we wanted of the bad guy.  Sure he should look cool but we shouldn't empathize with him nor want to be him.  He is after all a Mutual.

"We need guns.  Lots of guns."

Yes, of course the guns are your classic Nerf weapons with a detail paint job overhaul.  Actually, I ran into a bit of trouble here because I really wanted to have a bit of texture to the paint job.  I picked up some rubber texture paints but after a first coat I found that you can not tape off the rubber texture paint after it has dried.  It sticks too much to the masking tape and then pulls up like a skin when you attempt to remove the paint.  So that really limited me on how many detail passes I could do and could not include much rubber texture paint in the end.  The consistency of my rubber texture paints also went to pot shortly after getting into this project a ways.  For some reason the rubber texture paints started crystallizing after I sprayed them on.  It was rather strange and I had to abandon using the rubber texture paints from that point on.  You live and you learn.  Actually, I still don't know why the paints turned weird on me.  I didn't even have to buy the guns after a neighbor boy found out what I was doing he volunteered his entire Nerf arsenal and was more than happy to have them militarized even if in a sci-fi theme.  I was sure to inform his mother that we would be adding orange tips to the muzzles before returning them to him. :)

Blast It All

Adding muzzle flashes to the weapons was a straight forward process but required that we build sci-fi muzzle flashes from the future.  These flashes fit the bill perfectly but the real treat was adding in the distortion that ripples in front of the bad guys when their weapon is fired.

Environment

The environment was built from a fantastic asset pack from MK4 on the Unity Asset store.  We went through and blocked out the camera movement through the world and planned the shooting positions off all the clone bad guys prior to shooting in the studio.  Our intent was to light the bad guys specifically for the positions they would be attacking from in the game world.