Lockdown – Short Film
Lead Lighting Artist, Lead VFX, Lead Compositing, Lead Environment Design, Prop Concept Artist
Lockdown – Full Film
(Unreal Engine 5, Maya 2022, Blender, Adobe Substance 3D Painter, Procreate, Adobe After Effects 2023, Nuke 15.4, Filmora 12, 20 seconds, January 2024-April 2024)
Lockdown is a horror science fiction animated short film about an alien escaping it’s prison on a space station and taking revenge on it’s inhabitants.
This film was created by a team of five. For this project, I was Lead Lighting Artist, Lead VFX Artist, and Lead Compositing artist. I was also the head environment concept artist and an additional prop concept artist. This film was made in 2024.
Team: Atticus Lopez, Nadia Generes, Emily Nguyen, Elijah Whitlock
Lighting, VFX, and Compositing
(Unreal Engine 5, Nuke 15.4, 20 seconds, January 2024-April 2024)
To create the atmosphere for Lockdown I first did a layout lighting pass in the initial gray box of the film. From their I made adjustments to push the dark and gritty aesthetic we wanted for the final film. Using strong reds and deep blacks as the primary drivers for the lighting. To create the lighting effect, I worked in Unreal Engine 5 utilizing Lumen. I made the siren lights emissive and added a blinking effect to them, by using light functions. I also created a flickering effect in the experimentation room using light functions.
Layout Lighting
The electrical sparking VFX from the broken wires was created using an Unreal Engine’s Niagara particle system. They had slight variation in color and interacted with gravity to give them a realistic feel. They were also timed so the effect went off in intervals and not constantly.
Compositing consisted primarily of color grading in Nuke 15.4. I used the color grading tools to push the vibrancy of the reds and darken the shadows in the film.
Concept Art – Environment and Prop Art
(Procreate, Varying Sizes, January 2024)
For the environment of this film, we wanted to convey that the station was already under attack before the film started. Also, for the scope of the film we wanted to limit the entire short to one hallway. To meet these two requirements, I created a futuristic look that was in taters due to the escape of the alien. This concept art served as a tonal key for the rest of the prop art that was made for the film and drove the visual aesthetic when we transferred our concept art to the 3D space.
Lockdown Key Environment Art, Procreate, 12″ X 9″
Pipes, Procreate, 12″ x 9″
Warped Door, Procreate, 12″ x 9″
Scratched Door, Procreate, 12″ x 9″
Wires, Procreate, 12″ x 9″