I was so excited to get to work on new update to The Exorcist. It is a beloved property so I hoped I did it justice! If you haven't watched the new series please check it out, it's really good and surprisingly creepy for a network show. Below is a breakdown of some of the development that was done for the project and I added a favorite promo cut at the end so check it out! We really wanted to keep a high level of production value for all the elements so we developed a streamlined workflow for using 3D type in every card. I expand on that more further below as well as my first foray into Houdini.
Produced at FOX
Design Director: Ian MacRitchie
Design & Animation: Dan Pierse
Had a lot of fun developing some approaches for both the smoke and the type. Because of the production needs of banging out dozens of cards for different cuts, a solution was needed to avoid having to typeset each individual letter in 3D. We came across a plug-in for Cinema 4D called My3DFont Tool. I had to model each individual letter, number and punctuation and group them together in a specific order. Once completed, the script referenced that group and it was possible to start typing just like MoText but with the 3D geometry....pretty badass!
TurbulenceFD ended up working very well for the smoke in C4D. I am in the process of learning Houdini so I thought it was a good opportunity to get into it since their smoke sims are so lovely. With the help of my esteemed colleague, Jason Smart, I exported the approved cross that I sculpted in C4D as an Alembic file and imported that into Houdini. Opting not to use the shelf tools to get a better understanding of the process, I stumbled my way through until I got what I thought to be a pretty sweet looking smoke sim. I rendered in Mantra and used it in my composite in After Effects.
