I am part of a 4 man team called Ember Lab. We did all the visual effects for this 20 minute film in about 5 months. We mostly used After Effects for compositing as well as some asset creation, plus a little bit of Shake. For anything 3D we used Maya, and most of the 2D asset creation was done in Illustrator. We had to motion track almost every shot, too depending on how much the camera moved.
The idea behind the design was to use a style from old school games and movies that we grew up playing and watching like Punch Out, Street Fighter, Karate Kid, and Tron and project that into the future, since the story takes place in 2051. So most of the visual effects elements use a neon glow with some 80s influence for the colors and the players' UI controls were inspired by the Playstation buttons (square, circle, triangle).
This was only our second big project, and you can check out our reel with shots from this and some other projects at www.emberlab.com. The site is a work in progress, but we should have it finished by the end of the month.
They have just wrapped the sound and the film is just about finished. It will be premiering in LA on April 30th. For more info about the movie you can check out the website at www.turbothemovie.com
Check out the trailer:
Oh, and btw it looks like we made it onto Kotaku and Gizmodo now!
Feel free to digg the story if you'd like:
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Turbo_The_Video_Game_Movie_Not_Based_On_A_Real_Video_Game
