Director/CEO Craig Parker and his crew at Motif Studios in Cape Town (whose Gelato Roboto short we featured in Stash 160) just dropped us their latest passion project, a sci-fi feature film proof of concept called NERO.

Craig Parker: “Written by Willem Grobler, NERO is set in futuristic Cape Town where a cunning girl becomes the linchpin of a revolution in South Africa during World War III. It’s an advent of the Afropunk movement in the Africa diaspora.

“The animation was done in Blender with the idea of developing a character that felt neutral in many ways, was scrappy, but had a wardrobe that emphasized the action as well as the world in which they inhabited. To get the clothing to simulate well with gravity and body dynamics we used Marvelous software.
 

“NERO is set in futuristic Cape Town where a cunning girl becomes the linchpin of a revolution in South Africa during World War III.”

 
“The compositing was all done in After Effects. Blender has a great script export when it comes to facilitating an After Effects workflow. So using this to inhabit the world with smoke and dust elements became a large part of the final aesthetic.

“The other big hurdle was developing the line work as a separate render for the shading and final look to achieve a more graphic novel approach. These got quite heavy in rendering that was otherwise quite fast using Eevee, real-time render engine in Blender.

“The entire piece was built, animated, and rendered in a span of a month and a half by a small crew of artists. The audio team at Pressure Cooker Studios came to the party and infused a more African sound and elevated the piece significantly.”

Watch the breakdown reel:

 
 

 
Production: Motif Studios
Director: Craig Hunter Parker
Writer: Willem Grobler
Producer: Jacques Bock
3D modeler: Galeed Majiet, Andre Janse van Vuuren
Animator: Andre Janse van Vuuren, Craig Hunter Parker
Compositor/Editor: Craig Hunter Parker

Music/sound design: Pressure Cooker Studios