"The Patriots"

This documentary miniseries told the story about the Ecuadorian revolution against the Spaniards back in 1809. This project was done in the year 2009, the whole event was known as the "Ecuador Bicentennial". There were 3 episodes developed for television. The actors played that century's most important characters, both Spaniards and Ecuadorian as if they were interviewed. Unfortunately there are no pictures from that time so our task was to illustrate and animate some key moments from that era. We chose to model every set in order to move the camera wherever we were requested to do so. Some references were provided including paintings and drawings.

There were 3 guys in the team, including (again) my friend Gustavo Idrovo and myself. We had a lot of reference from Quito's Historic Center for the architectural models. Back then there were no sidewalks and no electricity. The rest is still the same way they were 2 centuries ago.

My task was to model, lit and render the scenes in Maya. Later I had to integrate both the illustrations and 3D backgrounds so it turned out to be some sort of a motion-comic. Please be aware that a lot of the 3D furniture and textures were provided so I am not taking any credit for them. I modeled most of the buildings, did some clean-up on a few 3D models that were done by another guy who came aboard later. For this job I did some research in order to improve the lighting setup and rendering. I used mental ray global illumination with photons. A few times I turned on final gathering because of the shadows. Enough said, take a look!!

Now this was a huge render so we could zoom in & out or pan the camera from one side to another. First you are going to see the whole image, then a couple of detail shots.

This church was modeled by another guy. Once I received the model I cleaned it up and then textured and illuminated it. 

Here are some still pictures, the originals were huge so we could play with the camera inside After Effects. All characters were illustrated by Gustavo Idrovo in Toon Boom Studio. For all these interior scenes I am taking credit expect for some furniture and most of the textures.

Finally, here is a short movie with some new backgrounds and characters.