Short - Juspion 3D
WINNER OF THE 2021 OPEN VISION FEST
Kyojuu Tokusou Juspion (巨獣特捜ジャスピオン Kyojū Tokusō Jasupion, translated as Special Megabeast Investigator Juspion), also known as Space Wolf Juspion, is a Japanese tokusatsu television series and part of the Metal Hero Series franchise. Produced by Toei Company, it was originally broadcast from 15 March 1985 to 24 March 1986, running for 46 episodes.
The series were a huge success in Brazil in 1989/1990, an I was a fanboy. As I grew up, I kept a fan look to the series, and by 2009 decided to pay a homage.
The project started very slowly, since I hadn’t the needed hard surface experience to deal with the modeling. Reference images on the Internet were scarse. Texture and rendering were a challenge too, using exclusively Photoshop and Mental Ray for Maya. After finishing some models through a couple of years and posting some turntables on Youtube, the project went into an hiatus.
In 2016, I decided to resume the project, and I don’t really know why. I started modeling all the characters again, trying to avail myself of the hard surface and rendering techniques acquired though the last years.
Using Maya, V-Ray, Substance Painter and Photoshop I’ve managed to finish the models and Lookdevs in a lightning fast pace.
In the beginning of 2018, I made the first animation test of the Daileon’s assembly (Daileon is Juspion’s mothership that converts into a battle mecha). It coincided with the announcement of a Juspion’s feature film by Sato Company, the hero’s rights holder in Brazil. I uploaded the test in March of that year, and it went kind of viral in Brazil.
Motivated by the audience, I made another assembly video, completer and more complex. This one had 2.5 minutes of full CG action (except for the first take), produced over 3.5 months. It became instantly viral with over 1.5 million views.
The third teaser went online on November 2019, focusing on the villains Satan Gorth and Mad Gallant (called MacGaren in Brazil). This video is much more complex than the previous, featuring my first human models ever, hair and grooming, Phoenix FD complex simulations and much more. Numbers by the end of November show a higher flow of views that the previous viral video. So I’d spent 5 months to produce this 3 minute-long short. All the videos were rendered in a single AMD Threadripper machine with V-Ray in bucket mode.
The fourth teaser went online on November 2020 after almost 4 months of hiatus. It’s a merge between the last two teasers, but with a totally different approach. It got international attention.