Synopsis Final Works: This scene is a cutscene from near the end of the game where the main villain’s pet guardian Norazok is introduced and given a cinematic treatment. In the actual game the fight against Norazok will follow right after. Norazok is a steam-engineered dragon-automaton. In the Final Works itself you can see Nircha, our heroine exploring a musty temple and encountering the guardian withing, leading to an epic struggle of magical and elemental energy.

Storyboard Final Works: Mist swirled through the dank stone passage, coiling and twisting like a nest of ethereal serpents as the flickering torches fastened to the wall, sent dancing shadows darting over the ancient, moss-clad stone. A faint and distant wind whispered in the passage, un-disturbed for centuries. Unexpectedly however,

another sound broke the pregnant silence; the ‘clack’ of boots on stone, walking at a steady and resolute pace. A pair of long, shapely legs disturbed the low-hanging mist, moisture beading on the fur-clad boots that strode on, towards the passage’s end; an ornate, stone archway, beyond which, the setting sun lit the world the red of leaping flames. The torchlight flashed off the stranger’s copper hair, lending it an almost otherworldly glow.

As she neared the end of the passageway, the tall woman shielded her eyes with her hand, the sudden flash of the sun blinding her, after the gloom of the tunnel. The dying light broke through the soft rain of ask and drizzle, flashing on the golden scales at her throat, thighs, thighs and framing her toned midriff. The furs she wore in complement of the lavish protection stirred a little in the breeze, now that she stood in the open air.

Before her stretched a wide platform, a single piece of stone jutting out over a cavernous drop and engraved with the symbol of the sun. All around loomed pillars of carved stone, making the wide room seem almost like a temple of some kind. A faint smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she muttered in a faint sing-song, half to herself and half to the room.

As though in answer, a great clamour came from the pit at the far side of the platform and with a clap of wings, a huge beast soared into the air, turning once before facing the woman and glaring at her, its eyes lit

with fury. A huge monster with a lizard-like body, a massive pair of leathery wings, the beating of which cleared away the rain of ash that fell all around; its yellow eyes flashed as it opened its great mouth, revealing lines of fangs, sharp as needles, but as wide and as long as two of man’s fingers. Some have described

dragons as having a nobility and pride to them to out-strip even a lion’s, but while it radiated savagery and power, this monster held none of the noble baring of the king of beasts. As though responding to the woman’s unspoken challenge by daring to invade its domain, the beast let out an ear-splitting bellow that shook the very stone the woman stood upon! The two locked eyes with one another, both predators born, as the woman reached for her weapons hanging at her waist; a pair of short-bladed swords, curved and tempered, one a cool blue in hue, the other a firey orange. The two stared one at the other for what seemed like an eternity, the whole world standing still and silent, waiting for some un-seen signal...

Suddenly, both combatants acted at once, the woman lunging forward, sprinting at a furious pace as the dragon landed, flames roaring from its maw in a burning sphere that rushed through the air, hot enough to melt steel!

Without a moment’s hesitation at such a ferocious attack, the warrior woman leapt into the air, somersaulting over the fireball, landing on her hands and springing up, over a second that threatened to engulf her in flaming death. She turned just once in the air, like a dancer or a gymnast, before landing right before the beast’s head. Even as her enemy readied another blast of fire, appearing almost like a star as the creature’s un-natural abilities formed the inferno between its jaws, she struck.

The sharp point of her blade sank deep into the creature’s neck, the fire emerging as a coughing gasp,

rather than the inferno it should have done. She shifted the knife only subtly, twisting and from the cut issued a stream of dank, foul-smelling oil, a jet of super-heated steam sending it spraying. This was no true dragon at all, but simply an ingenious automaton!

With a roar of pain, the mechanical monstrosity lashed out to maul the human that had dared to damage its neck, its clawed hand moving far faster than its size would belie. As the dragon grasped at its neck, trying to stop the gout of steam, the warrior woman hit the ground in a controlled fall. Dust streamed from her booted feet and sparks flew as she jammed her supernaturally strong blade into the stone in an attempt to arrest her wild skid backwards. Even as she stopped at last, knocked clear across the platform, back to

the door she entered by, the dragon-machine renewed its attack! With the wound in its neck however, its fire was constantly thrown off-target. As balls of flame burst around her, splashing off the stone floor, the woman started her own attack, focusing on the magic contained within her swords. He spun, calling the arcane words of power as she slashed at the empty air between her and the dragon. From the blue blade, a chilling bolt of freezing ice leapt as though flung from a catapult, while from the orange blade, flames no less intense than the dragon’s own leapt through the air. Her pirouette complete, the woman sank to her knees, calling upon both blades at once. Heat mixed with chill, the storm of wind this created becoming charged as it span, until a bolt of brilliant lightning crackled between the enchanted blades. With a mighty cry, the woman focused her will, sending the lightning streaking towards her enemy, even as the monster breathed forth a great stream of fire to finish her once and for all! The two energies, fuelled by magic and profane technology, met in the middle of the room, fire and lightning crashing into one another until a colossal explosion filled the air!

The actual Final Works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR75fBOOnLE

Proces Description Final Works: I chose to do my final works as a crossover between all the stuff that I learned during the course GameDesign. This beforehand would be limited to Reason, After Effects, Premiere, Daz and 3DSMax. Later included a few other software suites to get sounddesign down and some special effects.

Step 1: creating the models:

Not all models were created by me. The girl and the dragon were not. The temple, the hair, the daggers, the torches, the hallway and the armor-textures were. Respectively in 3dsmax and photoshop. I knew which models I needed.

Step 2: Creating the world and the story:

The world is much bigger than the part you see in the trailer. This can be found in the document. Gemini Campaign Setting. For the trailer I decided to go for something more spectacular. Namely a fight between a random daggerwielding sorceress and a mighty steam-dragon. I quickly rendered some low-quality poses to get started on this proces, and give an idea of the story. This can be found in storyboard.doc

Step 3: The Longest day: Rendering

After getting the models and baseposes down, I used skeletal rigs to tween animations giving a certain fluidity to the movements. This turned out to be challenging and it isn’t until the end of the Final Works that I consider myself halfway decent at it. Neither the less, I spent many a day looking at a progress bar before I could move on to step 4.

Step 4: postprocessing part 1: After Effects

After all the base videos were rendered it was time to edit all the special effects. Torches, lightsweeps, windgusts, the flapping of wings, and various elemental effects like rain, ash rain, fireballs and lightning were added with After Effects. Various renderscenes were also combined to make the entire thing look a lot more suspenseful

Step 5: postprocessing part 2: Premiere

After all the edited videos were done it was time to load them into Premiere and make it into one big video, this is also were the sounddesign came into play. I made various sounds using a headset microphone and Audacity and also downloaded a fair amount from freesound.org. I edited my voice in reason to make it sound more like a feminine warrior and I used a soundtrack from Two Steps From Hell to make the mood more intense. After adding about 14 fully occupied layers of sound and a total worktime of about 200 hours the final product was done. The full result can be found in the folder or on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR75fBOOnLE.

What did I learn? Software:

Before gamedesign I never worked with 3dsmax, premiere, after effects or audacity. I had to learn all these programs using videotutorials and trial and error to master these programs enough to be able to fabricate this final result.

Moviemaking and composition:

Animation is a skill onto itself and I found it very hard to get fluid animations down until the very end. I like to think the final sections were getting to be quite good though.

I also learned how to place and work cameras, apply the rule of thirds and various other moviemaking techniques, thanks to Zachariah Scott, who gave me a few friendly tutorials on Youtube. I also learned how to use lighting and the lack there-of to completely change the mood of a scene.

Things I changed during designing:

Due to lack of time and due to the fact that I found so much fun in the actual build-up to the dragon-fight. I decided to change the majority of the video to the build-up instead of the actual fight. The result is that the buildup is now 45 seconds, the staging is 20 seconds, the actual fight is 40 seconds and the title presentation is 10.

Showing the process:

The video in itself shows process and progress as it improves as I improve, trying to learn and use new things in composition, editing and rendering. All my files are saved but have proven to be around 80 gigabytes of data and can not be supplied on a single disk. If this proves a problem, please contact me.

Bram Frijns

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