Rainmaker
Entertainment

After working on the Ratchet and Clank video game series for several years I was asked to work on the film based on those games.

I met with the Producer and Director and they decided, based on my intimate knowledge of the property, to bring me on to the film as the Animation Producer. The main responsibility of the role was to work closely with the Animation Director to ensure that the animation of the characters was consistent with the style created for the games.

I began working with the Animation Director, looking at dailies and discussing how to bring these characters from the video game world to the big screen, making everything both consistent with the games, but also consistent with movie animation styles created by the best studios in the world.

After working with the team for a few weeks they began to understand how much I knew about the property since I was the Animation Director on the first 3 games as well as one of two writers on the first pair of games. They also saw some of the artwork I was able to create for those games.

With that in mind I was asked to take on other challenges including working on: character designs, creating facial expression maps of the main characters, designing and doing a preliminary model of the factory interior set, storyboards, and sitting in on writing sessions as the worked to finalize the script for the film

I was also responsible for creating final artwork of several props and onscreen images including: character posters, character cards, cork board images, billboards and adapting the visual alien language from the games into a version for the movie.

I also created an image for the marketing of the film that was used on the cover of Playstation Official Magazine.

Along the way I was gradually given more and more responsibility to work with Original Force animation who was creating about 40% of the animation for the movie in Nanjing, China. At first I was sitting in while the Animation Director discussed the scenes with them over a video call. Then I was asked to perform the animation direction with them as the Animation Director needed to spend more time with the Rainmaker crew. Eventually it was determined that it would speed the process by having me work directly with them in China.

I spent 3 months living in Nanjing working directly with the Chinese team. I was able to increase their daily output 3 fold over that span and we were able to wrap production on time.

My last assignment on the film was to write and animate the bonus scene that appeared after the end credits. This was based on an idea I had to bring in a fan favorite character (the Plumber) who had only appeared briefly in the film up to that point.

I was originally slated to work on the film for 6 months but because of the many things I was able to bring to the production I ended up working on the film for 18 months.