News

Exode an Adventurous Visual Expedition and Re-Manifestation of the Dinosaurs Era

Published on November 28, 2015

Have you ever been thought a movie about the re-manifestation of the Walt Disney’s pro-film Dinosaur? Whether your answer is yes (or) No, here we want to preface a movie “Exode” almost designed-in-similar to the Dinosaur Film made by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton for Walt Disney, which gives you a Minute thought “How’d they shoot this?” As Like a curious viewer we’re also interested to know about the behind the scenes of making “Exode” For that, we caught up Mr. Nicolas Mrikhi, one of the four Filmmakers of Exode.

On a Statement for Mr. Abhilash of Filmmakers Fans, Nicolas Mrikhi Said-

“ The first idea for this film came with an illustration I made of a giant dinosaur-like creature walking into the-

Animation Modelling Image Src: Exode Movie webpage

desert, with a whole city on its back. Then I asked myself, what would happen if this creature come to die? I confessed at that Point. Later I added 4 more Filmmakers (Kathleen Cartier, Sandrine Gimenez, Baptiste Roy and Thomas Saez) in my Team. After forming the team, we worked together on the story and visual development, we both used classic story board and 3D pre-visualization for building the structure of the film.

Filmmaker – Nicolas Mrikhi

Since our film was themed about a whole of people, we decided to refine everything as much as possible. We decided to focus on four (Ch1, Ch2, Ch3 and Ch4) characters primarily among the crowd and we came with that rocky look because we thought about them like sculptures, there were defined mostly from their silhouettes. That’s why our characters do not have mouth or detailed facial features or animations; we wanted them to be expressive trough their bodies.

It was difficult to bring them from the 2D drawings to the 3D models, at first, they kinda looked like zombies with their empty eye sockets. We decided to redesign them directly in digital sculpting, giving them sharper edges. Their clothing was a bit tricky too, it needed to feel rough and heavy but without hiding the recognizable silhouettes too much.

Every asset in the film was “hand” sculpted (using ZBrush), we wanted an organic and very detailed look for everything, as if everything was made from the scales of the creature. For the exodus part, we wanted something more empty, why because it is only a transition zone for the people and there is nothing for them there. For the particular exodus sequence, we used matte painting based on renders made with the software VUE.

The whole production was done during our final year of studies at Supinfocom Arles (now re-named as MOPA School). We often worked on weekends and until late at night, we had several sleepless nights at the end of the year, in order to match the deadline. For various reasons we worked on Maya 2014 with Arnold renderer, so we had to learn the software(s) during the production, since we worked on 3DsMax and VRay the previous years. Arnold Renderer allowed us to use a lot of displacement on our model, to have all our sculpted details on screen.

Image: Bapiste Roy

Most of the atmospheric effects and a lot of dust effects and particles were done in post production. This was essential to bring the sense of scale that we wanted.

We also had to record and edit the sound ourselves.

From Right-Thomas Saez, Sandrine Jimenez, Baptiste Roy, Kathleen Petit Poney and Nicolas Mokay.

The biggest trouble was the redesign of the characters. It was a really hard decision to take since we were already well in production and didn’t have much time to waste. This created some dispute among the team. Eventually, we were glad we took the time to do it. It also allowed us to make closer shots of the characters- and be with them“.

Due to the magnificent Unique visuals, the Crew of the Exode was Invited to the leading film festivals such as Festival International du Court Métrage, Future Film Festival- Italy, International Animation Film Festival- France, Festival du Film Court- France, ANIMAFEST- Croatia & More. We at Filmmakers Fans are wishing them all the best for their future endeavors and More like films are expecting from this team again: Visit them On Facebook and Twitter.