Operation Bug

Operation Bug is an action packed, sci fi adventure where three expert BUG pilots battle a deadly Butterfly Monster right in their own back garden.

My new 4 and a half minute short movie was created over the course of 8 months and contains over 50 special effects shots. All shot in a garden in South Dublin, Ireland, starring my own 3 kids. The film is a combination of live action green screen, real outdoor footage and CGI animation.

I started to use the amazing free 3D software package Blender early last year (2019) on another short The Jedi Jawa but was hungry to learn more and decided to do something more ambitious.

The Idea

How could I make an action movie with 3 small kids as the main characters that would not only be an enjoyable experience for them but also easy for me to shoot? The answer I found out was to have them sitting in car seats (and a buggy) and pretending that they are flying around in tiny metal spaceships. And it worked.

I wrote the script with age and attention spans in mind so that my eldest had the most lines and the majority of screen time while my youngest is only in a handful of shots.

The green screen shoot was quick and we had really good fun filming it.

Design

For someone who loves everything sci fi designing tiny bug spaceships was immensely enjoyable.
I had a fairly good idea of how I wanted the vehicles to look so using quick sketches as reference I got to work building each ship using this kitbash set and some bits from Video Copilot's Motion Design Pack.

The Process

Operation Bug was essently made in my spare time and anyone who has kids will know that spare time is at a premium so I had to try to be clever in how I set up my work flow.

I decided to render every shot using Blender's Eevee renderer. I would have prefered to have used the Cycles renderer for more realism but it would have taken hours per shot rather than minutes with Eevee.
It also would have been great to have spent more time on things like materials, lighting, animation etc but you can't take forever on these things otherwise the job will never get done and you have to draw the line somewhere and push on.