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Kameo: End of Game

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2009 in
The magnum-opus of the entire game. This huge sequence had to top everything you'd seen, push the capabilities of Kameo beyond what you'd previously experienced, draw together numerous story threads, introduce a twist in the plot and give the player a satisfactory ending. It was developed towards the end of the game's development so was under pressure to be completed fast and there were other...

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Microsoft HoloLens – Previs

by Michael Cawood November 10, 2008 in
Previsualization for Microsoft's HoloLens

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Kameo: Evolve Pummel Weed

by Michael Cawood January 6, 2008 in
All the Evolve scenes were very complex pieces that required a lot of R&D, but they presented fantastic opportunities to do something imaginative. The only rules were that it had to start with the baby monster and it had to transform into the adult monster, ideally through a method that reflected their elemental theme. I've included an earlier version of this Evolve cinematic developed for the original Xbox. I later decided to upgrade all the FMVs to HD resolution at the same time as changing the characters to match their new Xbox 360 designs.

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Vodafone: Texts UNLTD

by Michael Cawood August 15, 2007 in
Back to Passion Pictures again, and I did the previs on this advert for Vodafone involving shot setup and... a lot of dominos! Julian was handling the tech side of the dominos and I gave him feedback on the new tools.

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Panda Pander

by Michael Cawood June 28, 2007 in
Panda Pander gathered a few million hits at Crackle before they changed their format. After Two Face Tabby I didn't want to spend so long on my next project so I did some one off exercises to flesh out my showreel while I spent a few months developing the pre-production material for Panda Pander (working title "Shelf Life").

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Parkour: Personal Project

by Michael Cawood May 19, 2007 in
I'd wanted to do something acrobatic like this since my University years but when Disney's Tarzan came out I opted not to do it as I figured it would be seen as a rip off, since then Spiderman has also achieved similar feats. Well, in 2007, I felt it was time to have a go anyway...

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Toyota Auris: More Room for Life

by Michael Cawood February 21, 2007 in
I spent a week pre-visualising how the little people would work in the car's interior space. The results may look quite simple but it was surprisingly tricky finding natural ways to make each scenario work.

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Kameo: Evolve Flex

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2005 in
Like all the evolve scenes Flex was a unique problem. He had to look like water and be completely malleable. So this required looking into water and water shaders, and some hand painted frames to blend between elements. There was another water themed scene, but I've not included it here because I only did a polish job on the effects and final look of it and the animation was done by Neil. Both scenes turned out pretty well though and I was lucky that they didn't change too much when the rest of the characters were being updated (spikes wouldn't have looked good on water!). Here's the animatic for the Flex scene.

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Kameo: Evolve Rubble

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2005 in
This was a scene that was initially worked on my my friend Neil, but when we decided to revamp all the cut-scenes for the Xbox 360 Neil had moved onto another team. So I polished up the first half without changing too much and started the second half again from scratch. The original version was done at a time when we were taking a lot of shortcuts as part of the style of the scenes, but we'd taken all the other scenes a lot further and it was time to do something equally impressive for this.

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Kameo: Evolve Cloud Monster

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2005 in
This was one of the more imaginative characters in the game. Unfortunately after this cut-scene was finished the character proved too hard technically to implement in the game and we were beginning to realize we didn't need so many characters so he got the chop. But this scene was made available to view as an unlock-able extra (along with the animatic below) and featured in some of the early trailers for the game.

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The Club

by Michael Cawood March 21, 2005 in
I arrived just as this project was nearing completion so all I did was help where I was needed for a couple of months until it was all done. It was a mixture of scene setup with mocap performances. Mocap fixing, and full hand animated replacement where the mocap wasn't providing the necessary performance. I also animated a lot of hands and faces since the mocap doesn't provide that. Then there was lighting and rendering, and a bit of editing and titles work.

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Kameo: Theena Gives Book

by Michael Cawood April 7, 2004 in
This deleted sequence started life like most of the others as an animatic. But at this stage storyboards and animatics were fairly new to the team and they liked them so much they thought we didn't really need to do any animation. This wasn't initially a popular decision with the animators but ...

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Kameo: Evolve 40 Below

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2004 in
I originally created the Snowman Evolve scene with a more snowball like theme but as the character designs all changed this scene had to be updated as well. All the characters were generally made to look more detailed and aggressive, mostly through the addition of bumpy surfaces and spikes. In this particular case I actually preferred the original 'Snowman' design and I think he lost his snowball qualities in the update. So you can see both the final and the original versions here, along with the animatic I originally story-boarded below.

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Bud Light

by Michael Cawood December 15, 2003 in
This was a short project of only about fifteen days total. We had a small team and we knocked out ten to twenty previs commercials to give the advertising agency material to screen for testing purposes, before the choose which ones to shoot in live action. It was my first time working with Viewport 2.0 in Maya which was interesting and allowed for real-time lighting. It had it's limitations but it was ...

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Starfox Adventures: TRex Boss

by Michael Cawood September 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Other Sequences

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Arwing

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Starfox and his Staff

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: The End of Andross

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Meeting Tricky

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Krystal is Captured

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Lightfoot

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Drakor Boss

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Queen Earthwalker

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Krystal and the Warrior

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Introduction to Andross

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Scales Threatens the Queen

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Test of Fear

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2002 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Panda Panther Demoreel Intro

by Michael Cawood January 15, 2002 in
After the two large Skylanders projects had been completed the small team of staffers left at Panda Panther turned to creating some new showreel pieces for the company reel. They'd recently bought a motion control camera rig to shoot stop-motion elements. We moved it from one New York basement to ...

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Starfox Adventures: Bloop Attack

by Michael Cawood April 29, 2001 in
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started...

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Starfox Adventures: Storyboards

by Michael Cawood March 24, 2001 in
Global Sales 0

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Two Face Tabby

by Michael Cawood June 9, 1998 in
This started with a mythical legend I researched that I have completely forgotten now. My old friend Scott helped me find it, he's good with things like that. The legend formed the basis for the story and provided the name of the beast: Fenrir. The I didn't make any attempt to retell the legend, I just borrowed the idea for the characters and formed my own story from them in a similar setting. My plan for this was ambitious so I never actually managed to completely finish it. Some of the scenes are lacking ...

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Archer: Software Demo

by Michael Cawood May 18, 1998 in
During my last summer holiday as a University student I found a local company that built and sold video editing suits, they were also the UK distributors for a number of different pieces of software. I approached them, pitched some ideas and I was asked to do some animation for a video that would showcase and demonstrate the basics of an animation coloring system...