Max Q origins
Story
Max Q tells the story of the crew of the Desiderus, a short range orbital / submersible shuttle whose mission is to scout alien planets for potential resources, landing sites, life, mysteries: data!
The massive mothership BuXiu Qixi travels from system to system, mining data and selling them to the highest bidder. There are dozens of the short range scouts parked inside and whenever it reaches a new system, these shuttles fly off to do their thing!
In Max Q, something has gone wrong with one of the shuttles – the Pravarthak – and the Desiderus is called upon to find out what happened, rescue the crew, and – more importantly to the BuXiu Qixi – the data!
Story by Joel Benjamin and Brad Riddell, script by Brad Riddell
Joel Benjamin
Director / Co-Producer / Animation Lead
Brad Riddell
Co-Producer / Script Writer
Script
Script came together very quickly (2 months) as production was to start in January and we’d only found out the project was approved in October! We knew we wanted to treat it like a roller coaster ride and since we couldn’t decide if we wanted to fly around in space or zip around in an ocean, we decided upon both!
Character Relationships
We knew a “cool VR ride” would be fun on its own, but immediately we decided that we needed the audience engagement to be equally dependent upon their relationship with the characters. Danger feels more real in VR given the inherent immersion, and caring about the people you (seem) just inches away from is even better!
Voice Recording
Since production was starting so quickly after the script was finished, we only had about a month to cast and record the two lead actors. Luckily we immediately found Antonio and Arti! Recording happened over the internet since it was still in the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the session was a blast and those two are just pros!
initial Suit sketches
-Andrew Cheng
Octavia face Explorations
-Andrew Cheng
Heulfryn Face Explorations
-Andrew Cheng
The pipeline for this film is very unusual in that preproduction, production, and post production is happening simultaneously. Because the film began as a project through DePaul University, we (the producers) wanted to have access to as much talent all at once as possible from the school: designers, 3D Modelers and sculptors, animators, and even fx artists.
Because of the short turnaround between project approval and production, producer/director Joel Benjamin wanted to make sure that the animators all had something to work on right away.
He reached out to designer Andrew Cheng to help with character designs.
Final designs were approved for the suits and characters. Designs by Andrew Cheng.
Final suit designs
Modeling began in Maya. We had a team of three working on character modeling and rigging.
Flight suit model progress
To work well for VR, the character models had to be low poly enough to not slow playback down, but detailed enough to work very close to the viewer.
Heulfryn final model