Medusas Lair
During Summer of 2022, I partook in an internship with CG Pro ( https://www.becomecgpro.com/ ). throughout the internship I was able to take part in their 8 week Unreal Engine course “Unreal Engine for the filmmaker” and learned from industry professionals to create a 1-2 minute short film using skills learned from the class and my own research. Medusas lair was my final render from the class using Unreal Engine 5, Maya, Turbosquid, Mixamo, Sketchfab, and Quixel Bridge.
Medusas Lair was inspired by the epic of Athena and Medusa and the different versions of it. Following the tale where Athena turned Medusa into the Gorgon for a way of protecting her from Poseidon and men. My environment represents Medusas sanctuary that Athena gifted Medusa and allow her to live in peace. However, with man being curious and aiming to use Medusas power for their own greed and desires they journey into her sacred space where she acts in defense and protecting Athena’s Altar. Our lead character journeys into Medusas Lair to find her brother who never returned home, only to find him as a stone piece. When she realizes she is not alone, she explores to find a sword as protection hoping to fight off Medusas wrath.
To start my project, we were required to present a logline for the short and express what we wanted out of the class. For myself, I wanted to improve my environment skills and attempt animation if possible. At the time, I already had experience working in Unreal Engine 4, but the class required us to use Unreal Engine 5 which meant I had to familiarize myself with the interface and layout before starting.
When I first started using Unreal Engine I never used inspiration boards or photos, which I learned very quickly was not ideal. I searched for inspiration using Pinterest that followed the concept I had and that I felt would challenge me. I wanted to focus on making a practical environment and nothing to big, I wanted to make it as enclosed but spacious at the same time to allow for animation but still felt isolating for the character(s). My thought process was to follow a extraordinary feel, mystical and overgrown, filled with artifacts and treasures of offering to Goddess Athena.
After gathering reference images, I started the process of laying out basic shapes and start from the ground up, literally. This was my first time laying out shapes and creating the step one for my environment and I will certainly be doing this from here on out. I made a list of assets that I felt would fit the environment and acquired most of them from Quixel with some from Turbosquid and Sketchfab. I added particles and a setting sun to create a warm toned look.
From here I realized that I had to bring cameras in the start getting a feel of where I wanted my characters to go and walk. Despite being in film school and working as an editor, I’m not familiar with cameras and lighting sets up so this was a big learning curve that I ultimately took the longest to do. I had help from my friend Thai Luu ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/thai-luu-quoc-10112000tgb/ ) who assisted me in making a few tweaks to my lighting and camera settings throughout my learning process. CG Pros course taught me about sequencer and how to use it for my set up and shots. I learned how to create lens flares and speed of camera movements to create the cinematic visual that I wanted.
Next was characters. I knew I wanted a better Medusa that what was provided on Unreal Marketplace so again I reached out and commissioned Thai to create Medusa and assist me with Maya. I’m always eager to learn and sporadically decided I wanted to animate my character as well. This meant me learning Maya as well. I don’t know what I was thinking at this point as I was running on a few hours of sleep when I decided this but I full send into the task and made basic animation for our main character. For the stone men ,I got from Turbosquid, I used Maximo and rendered out one frame of each animation so I could have different poses. This is the part that I am super proud of myself because I’ve always wanted to learn animation. I thought about using motion capture but ultimately didn’t have enough time to get access from my university to do so.
Before submitting my final render, I decided to add sound effects and music using premiere pro. I added wind, grass, footsteps, slithering and hissing noises, and music to top off the final product.
In total the final render of Medusas Lair took 8 weeks, following the course step by step, alongside teaching myself new skills, software. This project has since inspired me to look toward a new field of study and career with cinematics and ultimately creating one of my most proudest projects thus far.
