X The Musical

P&O Cruises and Big Tele have asked Keyframe Studios to create a title sequence to accompany their new on-board musical - X

The opening sequence showcases a Willy Wonka/Squid Game robot assembly factory building dancing androids. Once the androids are constructed they drop down a shaft onto the stage as a real live dancer.

One of the main challenges was timing the construction of the 10 androids by 23 mechanical arms to match the entrance timing of each of the 10 dancers, critical for the rest of the performance. The entire sequence was a single shot meaning all the animation had to be physically correct and sync to the music.

A detailed animatic and pre-vis was created which was reverse-engineered to the music to hit the right timing for each actor to appear on stage. The client brief used AI imagery to convey mood and feel, from there the team designed and modelled the factory's final look.

The characters were modelled in Blender with texturing done in 2D software. Animation and rigging was done using 3ds Max which was then exported to into Unity for final lighting and rendering. Final post and effects were done using Da Vinci Resolve.

Title sequence for a musical about dancing robots

Credits

Project

Client

Animation Director

Animation Producer

Head of Technology/CTO

Animatics/Previs

Concept Art

Animators

Rigging

Modelling

Lighting