I'm Erik Campbell, I am the lead animator at Uproxx.
Jimi and I have this opportunity to create
an animated horror short film.
The coolest thing is
we're actually going to be taking it that much further
and we're going to be doing it live
up on a large building in Downtown LA
in Gallery Row.
There's artists from all walks of life
throughout LA,
so when you're going from gallery to gallery
you can see it actually in motion
and corresponding with the live actor
in the midst of all this rich art history.
It's going to be very exciting.
We're going to be collaborating with
a few other artists on this project...
this group of guys from New York,
Optical Animal,
do this amazing work
with projection mapping.
I'm Max Nova.
And I'm Austion Woolfolk,
and we're creative directors at Optical Animal.
This entire thing is an immersive experience
we're creating.
So we're taking this short film concept
and taking it outside of the confines
of a 16:9 square,
and projecting it on a large
surface in Los Angeles.
What they do is they go after
they do a site visit,
and they build a template for us.
So once they build a template,
then we're going to bring that template
into After Effects
and generate that space
in a digital world.
And then, they take what we create
and translate it back into
the projection map version.
So they're capable of doing things that
blow your mind...
that you don't really expect
to be possible with just a video projector.
And we're working with the musician Sweater Beats
who is going to be scoring this live experience.
I'm Antonio Cuna,
I am composing the music
for this whole live experience.
I've always been a fan of
sci-fi and fantasy,
and I get to take all the
soundtracks that I grew up watching
and put it into this project.
I've always wanted to score a film,
so it's going to be epic.
It's kind of a very spooky
and dark little narrative.
So that's the whole inspiration for the music that I've made.
Like techno... like dirty sounds...
With Intel Optane memory
I pin the sample library.
I can pin this, and then drag a sound
from here into Ableton.
Put some drums... Cool!
Everytime I use it,
it remembers the habits of...
"Hey, you should load this,"
and it loads faster and faster every time,
and that's great for me.
The rhythm, the beats, the melody...
all of those influence the way that the story is told,
in a way that should create a really mind-bending
illusion for people who are walking by.
The story calls for an actor
who's walking home, who's dribbling his basketball
and his shadow slowly starts to turn on him.
A person actually walks in front of the wall,
and then gets chased by their own shadow.
And as they turn around the shadow looks normal,
but then when they look away...
the shadow grows into this monsterous creature
that is stalking them.
Imagine if you turned around
and saw that your shadow
had grown into this giant werewolf.
I mean, that's just absolutely terrifying.
This environment through our shadow
that we're going to be projecting...
that is forcing people to question
what's actually happening in the real world.
The theme of this specific short
is something I think people will really be able to identify with.
There's always that feeling of something
right behind you when you're in the dark.
I don't know— it's like as soon as you turn off the lights,
there's definitely something there.
We have multiple artists
all trying to work together
Jimi is building these layers and layers and layers
frame by frame...
you know, there could be hundreds of frames
of artwork, and then we take that
and we bring it into After Effects
where we actually build the animation out.
And with Intel Optane memory
what we're really going to see is the amazing responsiveness
of the computer when jumping back and forth
between Photoshop and After Effects.
We're really going outside of our comfort zone
and trying things that we don't typically do.
We're actually going back to
a very old-school method of animation,
which is cell animation,
and there's a process called onion-skinning:
a technique where you draw an image,
and then it's on a light-table
and you have that next image—
you pull up the sheet and
you draw the next one over it,
so that you can see where your previous frame was,
so that you can create that motion smoothly through time.
What we're going to be doing in this process is
actually creating a digital version of that
It's a whole new tool. It's a whole new interface.
It's a new learning curve.
Any key moments where we're having a cool transformation
or any hands... things like that
we're going to do in this style.
And then when he turns around to look
he goes back to human.
Yup, exactly. That's right.
So we're taking something that
kind of has been lost in a way...
an art that's kind of disappearing,
and we're bringing it back to life
with a new technology,
and kind of merging the two together.
So it's really exciting to be able to do that.
I want to see how far we can push it,
especially when you throw in the projection.
Over the past five years,
technology has really, like, changed what's possible.
Back in the day, you wouldn't be able to even
edit a 4K file on your laptop.
Now we're able to run a 6K file in real-time
and do projection-mapping.
Like, that's just something that hasn't been done
and hasn't been possible with previous tech.
Just dealing with this concept of a shadow
is something that's very difficult with projection
because you can't project black
so how do you project a shadow?
And so I think working on, like
how to emulate lighting
and being able to communicate that with the animation team
is something that all together we are going to have to learn.
It's like, how do we create this effect when we're projecting light?
Horror is one of my favorite genres,
and we have the ability with this project
to create something that brings out those
fears that we all have.
It's not just a film that you're
just gonna sit down a watch.
It's more of an experience.
The grueling work and the time that goes into making animation
is all worth it when you see that.
I'm excited about merging it
all into one thing that hopefully will be really cool.
The art will get you.
We've come a long way since our first site visit where we
scoped everything out and we created our initial template
and we handed that over to the animators at Uproxx,
and now we're bringing in Sweater Beats with the music
and bringing it all together to have our full presentation tonight.
This is unlike anything we've done before
because we're actually creating a live experience
where there's a live-action actor that's interacting
with the projections in front of an audience that's unsuspecting.
Something as elaborate as this
just to be something that you happen upon
is really rare.
We had people working all over the country
We had Optical Animal based in New York.
We were working back and forth with them this entire time getting it all to work.
The entire effort is huge.
We've just been sharing our visions that elevate
the whole narrative on an emotional level.
I'm excited to hear everything come together.
They got six massive projectors
outputting all of these video signals, all of our animation
coming off of one laptop.
We've got the updated file. Yes, here's the drive there.
So we move the shadows and stuff a bit.
OK.
Yeah, it looks like it's spot-on now.
With Intel Optane memory were able to
run these multiple applications that we need,
switch between them really seamlessly,
bring in different files.
We had to make some last minute changes,
so we had to swap files out,
and we didn't have to wait at all for those files to be loaded in.
It was just loading in pretty much instantaneously.
This is different from anything that I've ever done before.
Having to interact with something that's physically there like
a 3D animation and having to syncopate things...
it's on another level.
We are five minutes away from putting like
a month's worth of work, music, animation, projection
to the big reveal of The Shadow.
It is a little nerve-wracking, but once your adrenaline gets going
it's actually kind of cool!
I came ready for this.
Roll camera.
Action, Matt...
This was just amazing.
Walking down the street and hearing the music.
I loved it.
It's so exciting to see it all come to life finally.
Woo!
Yeah!
I'm really proud of everybody that worked on this thing.
It looked great! It turned out incredible.
People who were looking behind me were like,
"Dude! What is going on? This is sick!"
Everything went great. You know, I mean,
I guess it was everything we could ask for really.
It was so satisfying to see all the hard work and vision come together
and be as mind-blowing as it was in the end.