With the MISTER studio in Sydney closed for 10 days between Christmas and New Year, CD Mike Williamson grabbed the time to create a personal project and revisit his childhood love of Roland Emmerich’s 1994 sci-fi classic “Stargate”.

Mike Williamson: “I wanted to use that time to create something that would allow me to play with new lighting and comping techniques and try streamlining the workflow in the studio.

“I went into it blindly and just played with a bunch of models seeing what worked and what didn’t.

“Given the short time frame, I wanted to concentrate on lighting and making shots that looked great so I purposely avoided a lot of animation or simulations which would have quickly overcomplicated things and pushed the timings of the project out.

“All in all it was a good test of seeing how far I could stretch myself in such a short amount of time and try to be as efficient as possible with the time I had.

“If a shot started becoming too complicated I moved on to another and usually found a better solution rather than getting bogged down with technical issues.

“My biggest take away was to be more experimental and allow happy accidents to happen as well as utilizing render passes more than I would usually. If I got a shot looking semi-decent in 3D I could make it look a heap sweeter in comp with all the passes.”
 

Production: MISTER
Director/animator: Mike Williamson
Music: Lorne Balfe