YESHUA – Full-CG Teaser for Crowdfunded Movie Trilogy
Zach Rodgers writes:
My company, Cloudland Studios, was hired to create a full-CG teaser as a crowdfunding tool for an upcoming movie trilogy.
This 1-minute teaser follows a short scene from the Bible where Jesus encounters a demon-possessed man. Watch the YESHUA teaser in 4K here:
Our work on the project
A demon-possessed man violently interacting with Jesus in A.D. 30 (in full-CG) is no small task. We handled everything from storyboarding, to creative art-direction, modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging, grooming, cloth simulation, wind simulation, effects, lighting, and animation.
How we used Blender
Blender is the primary 3D software that we use at Cloudland. On this project, we used Blender for modeling, rigging, grooming, animation, lighting and rendering.
We used ZBrush for sculpting, Substance Painter for texturing, and Marvelous Designer for cloth sims. But everything else was done in Blender.
Egyptian Fayum Portraits as references for the characters:
A large part of creating this Yeshua teaser was developing the characters that would bring it to life.
To remain as true to the times as possible, our client wanted to use real-world references of people that actually lived during the times of Christ. So they provided us with reference images taken from the Egyptian Fayum Portraits, a large historical collection of paintings of real people who lived between 100 B.C. and A.D. 300.
We were tasked with creating full-CG versions of these people to play as the Demoniac and Yeshua characters in the teaser video. Our artists worked meticulously to sculpt, texture, groom, rig, and animate these ancient characters, resulting in the most detailed 3D re-constructions ever created from the Egyptian Fayum Portraits.
Our client, Yeshua Productions, is setting out to create a trilogy of feature-length Bible films that follow a combined Gospel account of the life of Jesus. To learn more about their exciting project, visit the Yeshua Movement website.
To learn more about Cloudland Studios, check out our website and follow us on social media. All our links can be found here.
It looks promising
Looks great! Probably won’t watch due to distaste for the subject matter but best of luck on any future production.
Pretty cool !!!
Really looks good. The depiction of Jesus is excellent he looks like I’d imagine him to look like historically. Well done!
Thanks, Brian! We put a lot of thought and revisions into the looks of the characters. So we’re glad to hear they’re reading well to so many viewers. Thanks!
Magnificent work of realism. I particularly appreciate the treatment of expressions as well as the texture and kinetics of tissues (Blender ??). I also notice your client’s very exceptional idea of not giving Yeshua a cutesy graphic representation.
Sincere congratulations
Thanks Jean-Pierre! That means a lot. We used Blender v2.80.75 throughout this project.
As far as the look, the goal was/is to be as raw, real, and true to the time period and location as possible. So that means no Caucasian characters with British accents, as portrayed in most depictions :D haha. We’re so glad you appreciated our attention to detail. All the best!
Wow. This looks amazing. Excellent work.
Thanks, Alimayo!
The story and characters couldn’t interest me less, but the work is quite good.
The original portraits seem to me a bit more alive than the CG versions, wich look more like puppets (wich maybe was the intention). The audio and lipsync seem a bit off in certain parts, but that’s just nitpicking. Overall it looks great.
I’m ultra excited about this project. The subject matter and the characters couldn’t interest me MORE!!!! This is amazing. I’m in!