During my career, I have created many types of content for many different media and applications. In this work, I developed the characters used in a video game simulation that was used in one of the episodes of the police series SOKO Linz. SOKO is a police operations series franchise that chronicles the activities of a police cooperation center operating in the border triangle of Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic. The series is co-produced by the German ZDF channel and the Austrian ORF channel and produced by Gebhardt Productions. SOKO stands for “Special Commission” (Sonderkommission) in German. The spinoff SOKO Linz began broadcasting in 2021. The episode in question belongs to the second season and is entitled “Battle of Bytes”. The description of the episode according to the ORF 1 website: “An excursion into the digital world: The “Soko Linz” team of Katharina Stemberger and Daniel Gawlowski investigates gaming, e-sports, and fantasy in the new case “Battle of Bytes”. In the case of the murder of programmer Klaus Kammerer, greed and competition are possible motives. Was the success of a new game the motive for the crime?”
Light, camera, cut: content creation for a TV police series broadcasted in Germany and Austria
I created 3D content, including characters and animations, for the episode "Battle of Bytes" of the police series SOKO Linz, broadcast in Germany and Austria.
In this work, I was responsible for the digital recreation of a real samurai armor that is used by the criminal during the episode and that also appears in the game. Besides recreating the armor and the sword used by the main character – a Wakazashi – I also created the character – a ninja – that composes the horde of enemies that attacks the main character. For both characters, I was responsible for modeling, texturing, rigging, and animations. The recreation of the armor, as well as the sword, demanded a lot of care and attention to detail since the digital version needed to resemble as much as possible the real version used by the actor. This work was coordinated by the Playful Interactive Environments Lab (PIE lab) of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Campus Hagenberg, managed by Jeremiah Diephuis and with the brilliant participation of Georgi Kostov, who was responsible for the montage of the scenes, done on Unreal Engine 5.
These are some of the animations used to compose the final video game simulation used during the episode of the SOKO Linz series titled “Battle of Bytes”.
This is the final version of the game simulation created for the episode “Battle of Bytes” of the police series SOKO Linz, broadcast on ZDF (Germany) and ORF (Austria), and produced by Gebhardt Productions.
Project Outcome
Key points
I was responsible for the digital recreation of a real samurai armor that is used by the criminal during the episode and that also appears in the game. Besides recreating the armor and the sword used by the main character – a Wakizashi – I also created the character – a ninja – that composes the horde of enemies that attacks the main character. For both characters, I was responsible for modeling, texturing, rigging, and animations. The execution time of the work as a whole was less than two months, which in my case became a challenge. Especially considering that I did not have much time for revisions or corrections, and some of the tasks involved are naturally time-consuming.
What I learned
This work was technically challenging, and the crucial point was the participation of many people with different knowledge in their fields. While I was in charge of digitally recreating the armor and developing something visually accurate to the real world (as well as creating the enemies), other professionals were in charge of bringing the content I created into the engine and finishing the job. This work helped me put into practice a workflow that I have been perfecting for a few years now and allows me to create characters faster than I did a few years ago. I would love to do it again!
I'm always looking for new challenges, projects and creative partnerships. Shall we talk?
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© 2024 Huoston Rodrigues – Art Direction, Interaction Design, Motion Design, and 3D
