Three worlds collide in this epic continuation of the Brackenwood saga. A solo project, 3 years in the making with environments made in Unreal Engine and 2D animation in Toon Boom Harmony, this is the pilot episode of an intended series.

Created, written and animated by Adam Phillips
Original score: Lee Darkin-Miller

Ever wonder what happened to the people of Brackenwood? Why is Bitey the last of his kind? This new image depicts the final moments of the Dashkin, Viccans and Trogues as a portal opens from another world and the Yuyu suddenly appear. What happened next? We don’t yet know!

Welcome to our global team of professionals who created a game like The Final Moments, this game describes ways that can perfectly solve the problem of men with weak potency. Supplements that affect your activity can be viewed on this website https://redcross-cmd.org/generic-viagra.html.

If you’re interested in watching the movie being animated from the ground up, join me live on my Twitch stream every weekend. I’m making great progress, currently around three-quarters through the forest chase sequence. Last weekend I reached the milestone of two whole minutes of animation complete, which is around 15% of the finished movie’s projected running time.

New Patreon Reward

Over on the Brackenwood Patreon I’ve updated the $6 tier with a new reward; a monthly preview link of the latest work-in-progress of animation. Not only can you watch the latest completed scenes every month, but you can also step through the video frame-by-frame, leave comments on the scenes and even draw diagrams on the frames! You can help me find and fix stuff like continuity errors, missing character parts or anything that doesn’t quite look right. Of course, you can also leave other comments, like pointing out your favourite scenes or character expressions.

As you may know the Prowlies Wildlife Documentary was a “test project” to see how well I could integrate 2D animation in UE4 environments. When it was complete, it was featured on the Twitch Community Spotlight and got some attention on Twitter.

I attached Prowlies to my Epic MegaGrant application as a “prototype of a much larger project in the works”. To my utter disbelief and elation the application was successful. The MegaGrant funding arrived and that “much larger project” is now well and truly in production. For now, this is a solo project and I’ve streamed the entire process live on Twitch every weekend. The first teaser from this new movie got a huge response on Twitter; to date it’s the most popular I’ve ever posted on social media.

Here’s a quick process demonstration of how I’m getting my 2D animation into Unreal.

Step-by-step

1. In Unreal Engine, I animate the camera through the trees, then export that as an image sequence.
2. In Harmony, I import that image sequence to use as a guide for the animation.
3. When animation is complete, I render the character without the background.
4. Back in Unreal, I attach the animation to the camera.
5. The bouncy branch was built especially for this scene.

A 2D character moving around in the 3D environment means it can move through foliage, insect swarms, particle effects, and fog, without the need for special masks or digital treatments. The 2D character can even cast shadows from 3D lights!Since finishing the grasslands sequence, I’ve been very excited to see the forest sequence coming together, and it’s making good progress!

A year ago I was naively certain that I’d need to hire someone to build me some custom 2D integration tools for Unreal. But as I learned more I was amazed to discover that the tools are all there; I just needed to acquaint myself with them! Now that I’ve figured out my process, it’s a matter of getting faster at it. Apart from the 2D 3D integration, I still have a lot to learn about lighting and postprocess, but things are coming together very nicely. Thank you Epic, Twitch & Patreon supporters and the UE4 Community for your amazing support of this huge undertaking.

Last week I received the news that my latest Brackenwood project is officially an Epic MegaGrants recipient!

Since finishing the Prowlies short at the beginning of 2019 I’ve been steadily working on “The Last of the Dashkin 2” (temp title) on my Twitch stream. In fact, Prowlies was a test project to see if I could bring my 2D animation skills together with my experience in Unreal Engine. The end result was better that I’d anticipated, the short was even featured on Unreal Engine’s Twitch Community Spotlight. Even so, there were areas that I thought clearly needed improvement, especially in the realm of technical art.

So the past 7 months has seen solid, uninterrupted progress on the new, much larger movie, starting with the storyboard, which is now complete (at 16 minutes long!) and for the past 2 months, the opening backstory sequence. This is being told in the form of journal illustrations, taking up the first 2 minutes of the movie. Just like the Prowlies short, I’ve streamed 100% of the work on Twitch, followed closely by Brackenwood’s fans and patrons.

In all of my previous Brackenwood movies, cost has never really been a huge issue. Sure I pay for music, voice-over, assets and software, but Brackenwood supporters have been along for the ride for more than 15 years now. Newgrounds sponsorship, crowd-funding, PayPal donations and more recently Patreon supporters and Twitch subscribers. But this latest movie has always looked like being the biggest ever undertaking for me. As I aim to submit to film festivals and treat this one as more of a pitch project for many more Brackenwood things to come, I know that there are bigger costs associated, particularly in specialised areas of CG, VFX, music, audio and tech art.

This grant changes so much, not only for this specific project but for the future of Brackenwood. I want to thank the people at Epic MegaGrants for seeing its potential and judging it worthy of this incredible boost. Of course none of this would have happened without the undying support of Brackenwood’s loyal base over the past 15 years.

Join us on Twitch every weekend for progress and story spoilers!

Like the episode before it, this one was made live on Twitch over a number of weekends. I built the scenes in UE4 and exported the backgrounds as still images. These background stills were then brought into Toon Boom Harmony where I did all the animation. Everything that moves, from characters to waterfalls and FX are all 2D frame-by-frame animation. Even the digital treatments, like refraction and particles use hand-drawn elements.

Lemonee of Brackenwood lives deep in a forest hideout, safe and hidden from the Yuyu invaders. Protected by the forest’s magical defenses, she has everything she’d ever need to survive alone here until the end of her life should she choose to do so. But as a young girl she saw her people taken by the Yuyu and now works tirelessly to bring them back, dedicating her days and nights to the forest’s defenses and studying the Yuyu movements from afar. She is the only defender of Brackenwood against the vast horde of shadowy invaders, but she is unfazed by the odds.

This is The Last of the Dashkin 2 (tentative title), the current Brackenwood project on which I plan to spend most of my free time in 2019. Join me on Twitch every weekend as I write the story, build the environments and animate the characters.

My latest project is the Brackenwood Wildlife Documentary Series where I introduce Brackenwood wildlife in short documentary-style episodes with voice over narration. The first episode was Fatsack, the second episode under construction is Prowlies.

Update Dec 11, 2018: The completed scene, now with creature animation and finishing touches.

All the animation and FX are animated frame by frame in Toon Boom Harmony, but there’s also digital treatments like particles and surface reflections. As mentioned in a recent post, I created the 3D environment in Unreal Engine, then exported various angles as images which I then imported into Harmony. Much quicker than taking 8-10 hours painting each background by hand.

If you’re interested in watching these projects take shape, drop in to my Twitch stream on weekends.

Here’s the first test scene for the next Brackenwood wildlife doc featuring prowlies. The animation was done entirely in Toon Boom Harmony. The top half is a background still from my UE4 river environment. The lower half is all hand-drawn 2D, including water FX, shadows, reflections and creature animation. Surface movement and underwater refraction was done using a noise with evolution to warp the hand-drawn reflections.

This prowlies documentary episode will be a complex one because of all the water and multiple creatures. Using 3D backgrounds should work pretty well for the static shots, but I’m still figuring out how to combine 2D animation with 3D camera movement in the 3D environment. 2D planes in 3D environments? Selected 3D characters? 2D materials on particle systems? Achieving my style of 2D will be quite a challenge in Unreal, I think.

I’m working on this in my live streams so follow me on Twitch to get a notification when I go live.

Due to a severe clash of personalities and wildly divergent goals and priorities for Brackenwood, the working relationship deteriorated beyond repair and I made the decision to end the Dashkin project on Oct 24, 2018.

At its heart, Brackenwood is the story of the last of his kind; a lone dashkin exploring an empty world. Over time, the Dashkin game had become something I never liked and the fans never wanted: a multiplayer football brawler (I know… me too.) This happened gradually at first. I was led to believe the multiplayer was more of a mini game, and that the single player story-driven platformer would be the main game.

One night after a particularly heated email exchange, it became clear to me that the promise of a single player, story-driven game was about to be broken. Story has always been my ultimate goal and Brackenwood has never been about making money. Going through with that Steam launch would have shackled the team together for at least another year, but worse, devastated the Brackenwood story that the fans adore.

In terms of art, it’s been an extremely productive 661 days. To those who joined me on the journey by watching the streams, cheering me on and waiting for more story, I thank you for the past 22 months of love and enthusiasm and hope you’ll join me on the next project.

What’s next?

Almost every live stream, someone mentions how much they loved Brackenwood and ask if there’ll be more Bitey stories when the game is finished. Well I have some very good news.

The game assets have been split and I will be taking the art and animation back to my own Brackenwood projects, beginning with a Prowlies wildlife documentary. Below is a screenshot of work from the past few live Twitch streams. Drop in and watch the progress as I embark on a new animated short in Unreal Engine, combining 2D animation with lush 3D environments.

In game development, it’s necessary to optimise everything for performance on low spec hardware. In other words, to have the most people enjoying your game, it needs to look good and run smoothly on the world’s worst computers.

The great thing about making a movie in Unreal Engine 4 is that it only needs to run smoothly on my own machine. I can go absolutely crazy with materials, lighting, foliage, particles and reflection. The above scene mostly uses optimised assets, but particle numbers, shadow resolution and density of geometry are far higher than it would be in a game.

The main challenge from here will be adding the 2D animation for characters. As you can see, the 2D prowlie in the grass (animated in Toon Boom Harmony 16) fits the scene very nicely. This will be my focus from here on. Join me on Twitch!

As you may know, Brackenwood is a 2D animated series created in vector animation software. I started making early Brackenwood in Flash (Adobe Animate) and now in Toon Boom Harmony. Like most cartoon-style 2D, characters are generally outlines filled with colour. The result is often called ‘cel-shaded’ effect. I’ve been super excited about the prospect of dynamic lighting in Unreal Engine. Bitey will be a cel-shaded character with dynamic lighting. In the image below, drag the centre-line to see Bitey with flat shading and dynamic lights.