CyberWolf

UE Animated Short

Overview

I figured I was missing some genuine 2000s cringe in my life, so I decided to make an animated show called "Ночной Сеанс" (Night Session). It’s a collection of fake trailers and story sketches dedicated to brainless, B-movie action flicks, pushing the storytelling and visuals to pure, absolute absurdity.

I wanted to test out the new MetaHuman features and Unreal Engine 5.8's video-to-animation tools, so this project was a great way to combine hands-on technical practice with creative exploration.

The main character of the first episode is Cyberwolf: a furry avenger raised by wolves, who relentlessly hunts down and utterly destroys his enemies. I set up custom transformation shaders right inside Unreal Engine to pull off his look.

I decided to mix motion capture animation with video-to-animation features right inside Unreal Engine. Surprisingly, it turned out pretty well-much better than I expected.

The goal of the storytelling was to push every element -both visual and narrative to absolute absurdity. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound quite as idiotic in English as it does in Russian, since I wrote it in Russian originally and never even thought I'd actually make it. But I did my best to adapt it.

For most characters, I made face scans and turned them into MetaHumans, but since I didn't have the opportunity to scan every single face, I sculpted some of them manually in Blender using photo references. In the end, it all came together and turned out pretty solid.

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