Meta Runner

This credit refers to my main role that I was hired for by Glitch – developing tools and systems in UE4 to automate, improve, and optimise workflow and pipeline. The team used a number of my tools to assist with animation import, shot setup, and rendering, and there is a whole suite of other tools for more specific jobs and scenarios that have helped make everyone’s work a lot easier.

This is a new role I picked up in Season 3. As the Crowd Technical Artist, my role was to ensure the crowd members were consistent and correct throughout the season between shots and episodes, as well as setting up background crowd with provided animations, including planning, randomising, and implementing the characters. The biggest examples of this was the crowd in Vagabonds Landing in Episode 4 and the crowd in Dr Sheridan’s server in Episodes 6-8 (I also co-ordinated and implemented most of the background VFX in Dr Sheridan’s server in Episode 6 from various assets created for past seasons and episodes). Most of the crowd that are not either front and centre on screen and crowd that’s not talking was my implementation using the assets and resources I was provided.

As with every show, I assisted with various Post-Production duties. A large portion of this was implementing Quality Assurance fixes to the final Level Sequences in UE4 and implementing missing and repetitive VFX, reimporting animations, and ensuring characters, props, and environment weren’t clipping throughout the shots. I also assisted with watching each new render to help the Art Director and managers pick up fixes that they might have missed to help push for the best quality show we could make.

After the Murder Drones pilot, I assisted with creating and implementing VFX (particle systems and fracture simulations mainly). During development of Episode 3, Glitch Productions hired a specialist VFX Artist to take over the role completely, allowing me to focus on other roles, in particular as Crowd Technical Artist and IT Technician. My experience with VFX for Meta Runner Season 3 helped improve my knowledge of Niagara in UE4, and I also learned a lot about materials and post process effects.

Another carryover from the Murder Drones pilot, before the VFX Artist was hired, I created most of the destruction simulations seen in the first three episodes. The biggest examples are in the fight between Evelyn and Tari in Episode 1.

This was a relatively new role for me – basically I was in charge of all the IT stuff for Glitch Productions, for hardware, software, and systems. This role taught me how to build and debug PCs, taught me about backup systems, admin roles for various software, NAS management, AWS management, IT security, and so very much more!

The Episode 7 After Credits Scene was originally not in the script. Myself and the Art Director were having drinks one night after work with a few coworkers and we were chatting about what would happen to the characters at the end of the episode. Afterwards, I went home and wrote a short script, showed it to the Art Director, then worked with him and an animator to put it all together. We then presented the scene to the Leads and it was approved to be added in after the credits.

In this role, I developed systems and tools to help other Post-Production team members. The main system of note is the Drone Flocking System seen in Episode 9, and some tools to help crowd randomisation in other episodes. On top of that I also developed useful editor shortcut tools that paved the way for some of the more optimised versions used for future projects.

This is the role that I contributed more time to during Meta Runner season 2. This role consisted primarily of fixing Quality Assurance notes in the final Level Sequences, as well as assisting with renders, animation/character/object imports from Maya, and assisting with composing the renders in Adobe Premiere. The main point of me being in this role wasn’t only to use my knowledge of UE4 to help produce the final product, but also to show me the whole pipeline used by Glitch Productions so that I could help identify parts that could be automated or optimised, leading to development of a lot of the tools and systems used for future projects.