The story
X is an on-board musical for P&O Cruises about dancing robots. Its opening sequence shows a robot assembly factory, part Willy Wonka, part Squid Game, building dancing androids. Once each android is built, it drops down a shaft onto the stage as a real, live dancer.
What we did
P&O Cruises and Big Tele asked us to create the title sequence for the show. The main challenge was timing the construction of 10 androids by 23 mechanical arms to match the entrance of each of the 10 dancers, which was critical for the rest of the performance. The whole sequence is a single shot, so all the animation had to be physically correct and in sync with the music. We made a detailed animatic and previs, reverse-engineered to the music, to hit the right moment for each performer to appear on stage. The client brief used AI imagery to set the mood and feel, and from there we designed and modelled the factory's final look. The characters were modelled in Blender and textured in 2D software. Rigging and animation were done in 3ds Max, then exported to Unity for lighting and rendering. Final post and effects were done in DaVinci Resolve.
Stills
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Credits
