To maintain its standard and baffle its large fan base, The Halo: Fall of Reach animation developed by 343 industries and created by the Sequence Group used Cospective’s remote review and approval solution called ‘Frankie’.
In order to convey the origins of Halo hero – The Master Chief – in a series of fully CG animations, Sequence Group integrated initial concepts through to final delivery. Developer 343 Industries, the vanguard of all things Halo, originally proposed The Fall of Reach as a short 2D motion comic to coincide with the release of the latest video game installment Halo 5: Guardians.
With a team of less than 50 artists and a tight six-month schedule to produce over an hour of ultra-polished 3D content, the Sequence Group knew it was going to have to pull out every trick in the bag. Sequence Group, executive producer, Dan Sioui, said, “To be tasked with telling the origin story of Halo’s Master Chief is not something to be taken lightly especially when working in the medium of 3D. We wanted to produce something that would really grab fans of the series, and we knew that we had to tackle the job head on to deliver great results.”
As Halo is based on Eric Nylund’s novel source material, Sequence opted 3D medium and carried out the entire art concepts, modeling, rigging, animation, facial expression and compositing work thus, handling pre-production all the way to final broadcast delivery.
“Across the 800 shots there was a huge amount of 2D and 3D assets, backgrounds, animation and composting to accomplish, and with a small team in place this turned out be difficult. Close communication and asset coordination was absolutely essential to ensure minimal delay or hold-ups,” recollects Sioui.
That’s where Frankie came in as this web-based review and approval solution was used to accelerate communication, boost the decision making process by speeding the creative analysis process. Frankie enables to interactively review and discuss videos between multiple locations. Also it allows to play, pause, make notes and even sketch ideas right onto the video and all this analysis can be done in sync with everyone in the review.
With 90 per cent of its clients being outside its Vancouver hometown, Frankie was the profound catalyst for Sequence. Sioui explains, “Before Frankie, communication with clients would be done by telephone or email but with Frankie, we could share multiple versions of shots, assets or audio reviews with the client, and they could instantly review and compare shots.” In addition, Frankie creates a PDF export of the review session linked to specific images and notes which can be shared with clients. This provides a perfect summary document that completely streamlines revision expectations.
Cospective is known for the creation of innovative software solutions to challenges faced in visual communications. With solutions like Frankie which work efficiently in all browsers, Cospective has aided Sequence to deliver a heavy project. “The facility to review assets and videos in sync in Frankie, streamline revision requests with additional clarity, and avoid extraneous internal labour has been a major benefit to the way we conduct business with our offsite partners. Frankie helped to make Fall of Reach possible,” concludes Sioui.