DROIDS

Special design project, 2012.
Software is Maya, Mental Ray, and Shake. Minimal lighting with final gather. The goal was to create something that looks miniature, which I tried to carry through the design and animation of the characters.
It's animated at 12fps.
The depth of field is done mainly in single pass renders. Shake was used for secondary image effects (extra blur) and for adding all of that lens smudge. Dirt images were lifted (stolen) off the internet... along with the opening STAR WARS footage (obviously). The original footage was then chopped down to 12fps and given the same Shake treatment.
C3PO is an original re-design, while R2D2's re-design is kind of borrowed from a sculpture I saw (sorry!). The sand is all texture and displacement maps... I took a photo of the sand in my daughter's sandbox and used that for color, spec, and displacement mapping.
The original SW sequence is something like 4-6 minutes long... I re-edited the opening to play at 2 minutes, which was tricky. Tricky to have it play and feel seamless while editing out so much. Tricky to get the soundtrack music to sync up throughout.
In the end credits you see orange and blue ramps over black... those orange and black swatches were added to the desert shots for added continuity.