In June of 2019, Xbox announced the upcoming release of Gears 5 with a captivating and suspenseful teaser trailer… ‘Kait, Broken’. The trailer centered on main character Kait, a conflicted hero torn between her duty to her squad and a mysterious pull to her sworn enemy, the Swarm. Upon release of the game in September 2019, players were able to explore new worlds, combat enemies and uncover dark secrets.
To help plan their vision for an engaging story intertwined across a short series of visuals, the creative producers of ‘Kait, Broken’ worked with THE THIRD FLOOR to previsualize the trailer end to end. THE THIRD FLOOR’s artists, led by supervisor Mitch Gonzalez, put the virtual world to use to help the client team work out action beats and explore animation, character timing and composition ahead of final production.
“We collaborated with THE THIRD FLOOR to visualize all the shots early in the process, which helped us tremendously as we ramped up full production,” said Andy Hall, Creative Director, ‘Kait, Broken’/Gears 5.
“For this project, we put a lot of focus on a higher level of facial animation quality in the previs as it would be a guide for the facial motion capture session at a later date,” said Mitch Gonzalez, Visualization Supervisor, THE THIRD FLOOR. “The previs also needed to convey the raw emotion shown by Kait as she’s torn between conflicting influences and relationships. Our team really enjoyed contributing to the realization of the client’s amazing vision of this piece.”
The final trailer, which had final animation and imagery by Elastic, ‘Kait, Broken’ was highly regarded by fans and around the industry, winning the 2019 Clio Entertainment Silver award (teaser) and the 2019 Clio Entertainment Gold award (music).
For a look at how visualization was used in the development of the trailer, check out the below Kait, Broken- Previs Side by Side Reel on our YouTube channel!
See THE THIRD FLOOR’s games website for more information on how our teams can help support the design and planning of other game trailers, cinematics and in-game cutscenes!
https://www.games.thethirdfloorinc.com
