Vitaly S Alexius

[rom.ac] The creation process of “Train Conductor” AI drone.

Added 2018-09-21 12:48:11 +0000 UTC

Scenario: anti-grav powered “Conductor” follows Pilot across ruins of a train station, demanding obedience of train-laws.

Step 1: Quick concept art sketch of Conductor:

Step 2:

I dig into my five terabyte photography archive of “Abandoned places” searching for the specific atmosphere and textures of train stations.

In my archives, I discover zee following items:

Train rooftops, from my home town of Novokuznetsk.

[Useful find for the first frame, in which Pilot roams on train rooftops]

Iceland glaciers [for dat feel of nuclear winter]:

Abandoned train depo in United Kingdom [for train station interiors]:

Factory ruins in mountains of British Columbia:

An abandoned train in Texas [for the train interior atmosphere]:

Step 3: I take photos of my friend Rose in Pilot’s outfit, on a rather wrinkled green screen. [Nikki obtained me a new steamer two days ago and I didn’t get to de-wrinkle all my things yet]

Step 4: the draaawening in Photoshop.

First frame progress in grayscale for better contrast viewing:

STEP 5:
I open up mandelbulb and generate a lovely 3D render based on my sketch:

STEP 6: I insert the Conductor render into my scene, adding details in Photoshop:

The rest of the scenes take no time at all, as everything is finally coming together.

Here’s our train station interiors, in which the Conductor also works as cashier [after having crashed through the train station’s wall Kool Aid style].