Starship Troopers: Invasion

Blog #13 On Blu-ray & DVD!

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:12:00 -0400

The day has finally come. It has been a long 3 years of hard work by hundreds of people involved in the project, and it’s literally brimming with the blood, sweat, and tears of so many staff members. So, I hope you all enjoy what we created and can see all that passion packed into the finished product. The movie was given the same treatment as a big CG theatrical release so trust me when I say it’s a title you will want to own on Blu-ray — in 1080p High Definition with amazing 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. For those who would like to see exactly what it took to produce this film, you can check out the 11 featurettes created first hand by the production team. Various stages of filmmaking are described in vivid detail: from how the character, ship, and bug designs were made and converted to CGI models — to how the motion capture movements were imported.

(Below: Creating a CG model from a design sketch)

(Below: Applying motion captured movement to a CG model)

(Below: A scene before and after rendering)

You can enjoy the following special features on Blu-ray:

- Blu-ray Exclusive Conceptual Art Gallery

- Filmmaker Commentary

- Deleted Scenes:

1) “I don’t like funerals.”

2) Marzijon Wormhole

- Gag Reel

- The Making of Starship Troopers: Invasion

1) Genesis

2) Archive

3) Character Design

4) Motion Capture

5) Powersuits

6) Bugs

7) Ships

8) Animation

9) Backgrounds

10) Compositing

11) Music

I’d like to take one last opportunity to thank all the staff members who worked hard day and night (weekends included) to create this amazing film. Cheers!

Don’t sweat it Troopers, you know I’ll be back with at least one or two more updates, so be sure to report back for duty!

Marauder MKII

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:02:00 -0400

As I described in a previous blog post, the full power suit array is comprised of 3 independent but cooperative components. The inner garment, the main body power suit, and the Marauder MKII. Marauder appeared in the 3rd film so we wanted Mr. Aramaki – the master of powered exoskeleton design – to create a badass yet realistic update.

The MKII is a mech/vehicle “worn” over the regular power suit to enhance body movement, provide stronger armor, and add additional firepower. While it’s capable of walking on 2 legs, the thruster jet is more effective for bigger distances. It’s equipped with dual Gatling guns, missile launchers, and mega chainsaws to slice and dice bugs in hand-to-leg combat. Within the front protective covering, the operator benefits from a HUD that shows all surroundings and relevant information.

This would be an exceptionally pricey piece of equipment, impossible to mass produce, and thus still limited to Rico’s Roughnecks. Here is the more detailed design and you can see the iconic “Death from Above” emblazoned on the hood.

The MKII’s can kick bug ass but will they arrive in time to save the day? Stay tuned…

I’d like to take a moment to thank all of you fans for the very enthusiastic welcome at the Comic-con premiere! The film also opened in theatres in Japan and we’re getting great feedback on Twitter.

Saddle up, Troopers, the bug threat is very real and…INCOMING!!!

L-6 Base

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:35:00 -0400

In the first movie, there was a huge lunar base orbiting the moon to serve as a supply center and staging point for varying starships and missions. You may recall a similar battlestation called Ticonderoga that was the staging point for the attack on Klendathu. In the 3rd film (like the novel), the fleet’s headquarters were located at a base at Sanctuary. Since this movie takes place quite a few years after the third film, we took the liberty to create another station near the moon, the L-6 Base (“L” stands for Lunar). Here is the initial concept design and the final look.

And, guess who is stationed there as Terra’s last defense? General Johnny Rico.

Even though Johnny Rico is Mobile Infantry for life, this Fleet base has multiple functions in addition to starship docking. It’s equipped with some heavy firepower including nukes and a plasma cannon.

With Johnny Rico on the bridge, you know his Roughnecks can’t be too far off – maybe with the new Marauder MK II? A ship had to be designed/created for his team that could carry and launch pods. Yes, you read it right. The drop pods described in the original novel. Rest assured, the Roughnecks will don these updated Marauder suits and enter the fray. But where are they going to drop? You’ll have to wait for the movie…but here is a sneak peak

Saddle up, troopers! We are planning for a World Premiere in San Diego! And Everyone Fights! Casper, Ed, Flint, Joseph, Mr. Aramaki, Mr. Kawada, and Lance from the game! Don’t forget to watch the trailer!

THE REUNION

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:28:32 -0400

I guess it’s about time we reveal some fun facts. As you may remember from the original film, the friendship of Johnny, Carmen, and Carl was a central story element. We watched them graduate high school together and then put their lives on the line in service of the Federation. Now, we are going to have the 3 friends get together…but in a way that they would have not expected.

Carmen Ibanez, who flew the Rodger Young in the first movie, is now captain of the John A. Warden (the battleship I introduced in previous blogs). Carl Jenkins, now Minister of Paranormal Warfare, takes over the John A. Warden for a deep space experiment – leaving Carmen livid and ship-less. Carl brushes off her vehement objections and disappears with the ship off into the vast nebula. When Carl and the ship go radio-silent, guess who orders a rescue mission? Yep…it’s big-time general/war-hero Johnny Rico.

As our film is set almost 10 years after the first movie, the big 3 are now in their mid 30’s and have somehow kept their relationships in tact despite deployments millions of miles apart. You will see their fragile yet strangely resilient relationship evolve in this movie, especially with Rico still a little soft on Carmen…and a familiar uncertainty about whether Carmen still reciprocates those feelings. We definitely paid homage to the original movie (in all sorts of ways), so we can’t wait to see how fans of the original respond to an awesome mix of nostalgia and “franchise update.”

Johnny Rico now has a scar and eye patch. We will leave to your imagination how he got that, but we really like the rugged, battle-hardened look.

Carmen is still beautiful and passionate. She is Fleet so she is not wearing a power suit.

Carl is brushing up on his psychic ability and adding some more creepiness.

I’m bursting at the seams…would love nothing more than to share everything about the film with all of you. However, for now, I have to get back to my civil duties as finishing the movie guarantees my citizenship!

BUGS!!

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:55:00 -0400

As I mentioned in a previous post, we made the decision upfront to stay within the movie’s universe despite all being huge fans of the original Heinlein novel. It just made sense to bring back the sinister hordes of bugs from the original film. We obviously kept the iconic Warrior bug as our main enemy, but we also wanted to have new and fresh approaches to the bugs. Our first challenge was ensuring the bugs fit within the Starships. If you measure the bugs closely in the original film, you realize that they are rather big — probably too big to charge down a ship’s corridor. For this film, we took a liberty and scaled down the Warrior bug (just slightly) for that reason. Roaches come in different sizes in the real world, right? Otherwise, they look identical, are filled with the same green blood, and let out the same shrieks when getting pumped full of Federation lead. We’ve had a lot of fun with the bug “characters.” We needed someone to voice the base bug shrieks and casted a Japanese actor whose real name happened to be Mr. Bug (“Baku” is the Japanese phonetic spelling) Owada. His voice has been digitally transformed and the final outcome has the same feel as the original films but is just a bit more “animated.”

Although, we wanted to also use some other bugs from the movie for continuity, they were just too large. To add some variety to the battle scenes, we were looking for a bug that could attack the troopers from distance. The original bugs from the film were armed with plasma and flame-based “weapons.” Plasma just seemed more badass so we created a new species from scratch and named it “Plasma Grenadier Bug.” The design is inspired by several different insects including the beetle, grub, mantis, and pill-bug.

There are some more fun variations of the bugs but I cannot reveal EVERYTHING here. Don’t worry, we are close to the finish line and will announce the release date soon. Stay sharp, Troopers! The only good bug is a dead bug! Right…?

Power Suits

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:06:00 -0400

It goes without saying that the power suits were essential to the original Heinlein novel. From what I’ve heard, the first movie did not have the power suits due to a “creative decision” made at the time. Later on, Ed decided to have the Marauder suits appear in the third movie as an homage to the novel.

For our movie, we definitely wanted to have fun with the power suits since we have the master of mechanical and robotic designs, Mr Shinji Aramaki as our director. Mr Aramaki has designed a lot of “mecha” (that’s what we call it in Japanese) for various movies. Incidentally, his first inspiration and motivation to start his career was actually the illustration on the Japanese version of the novel. As Mr Aramaki was already a diehard fan of Starship Troopers before this project, we turned over the keys and gave him full freedom to approach the design process as both a filmmaker and a fan. We couldn’t be happier with the result. He worked together with another designer bearing the same first name, Mr Shinji Usui (also known for mecha designs, but in the game space). They essentially came up with 3 different power suits: The inner suit to support all muscles, the main power suit, and the new Marauder Mk II.

Here are some of the initial conceptual designs.

The inner suit conceptual design…

Main power suit conceptual design…

Marauder conceptual design…

When the initial designs were ready, I asked for a variation for female characters and clear markings and call signs on the suits so that the viewers can easily recognize who’s who

Here is the conceptual design for the female version. It’s slimmer but not too much in order to preserve the integrity/authenticity we feel best fits the Starship Troopers universe.

What do you think? If you’re still on the fence as to whether the power suit designs fit the Starship Troopers universe, just take a look at the finished suit. Enjoy!

Mo-cap

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:33:00 -0400

Sorry for the radio silence for the last month. I was fighting off zombies and Plagas, helping mutants and comic book heroes, and battling against Word War II German tanks.

Well, you probably have already seen the announcement of the new mobile game. It will be the prequel to our movie and you will be defending Fort Casey with the K-12 team under the command of Hero. Hope you all are excited as it will be available on both iOS and Android (that should cover about 90% of you). We also are about to debut our teaser trailer at Wondercon on Mar 17th! If you cannot make it out to lovely Anaheim, CA, rest assured you will get to see it online soon after. Will talk about the trailer next time.

This time, let me talk a little bit about the motion capture we did in Tokyo last year. As you all know, on March 11, 2011, the huge earthquake and devastating Tsunami hit the coast of Japan. It has been a year, but a full recovery is still a very long way off. We already had locked in our travel plans to do the motion capture in Tokyo in May, and the US staff flew out from Houston as originally planned. It was only 2 months after the earthquake with frequent aftershocks and a shortage of electricity — so it was a rather scary experience for the folks who flew in. For some of them, it was their first experience with earthquakes. Even though it was in an unusual atmosphere (to say the least), the motion capture went very well. Motion capture is done with people wearing black skin-tight suits with kind of light balls that reflect the infrared signals and let the multiple high tech cameras capture the movement. As our characters are supposed to be wearing power suits in the movie, we had to put sponges under our actors’ arms so that their movements would be limited as if they were wearing armor. They also had to fight imaginary bugs. But, for some scenes, a Japanese staffer held a balloon and made squeaky noises to simulate the bug squeals. The funny part is that he practiced impersonating a bug at home in front of his wife, and I guess his wife was like “what the ???”. Anyway, please check out this glimpse of how the motion capture was done. It looks strange and a bit comical but guaranteed to be amazing sequences when finished.

We are about to start our voice recording sessions. Our 2-year march is almost at its finale. Keep your expectations high; STI is going to blow your expectations out of the water!

Troopers

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:13:14 -0500

As already mentioned, camaraderie is just as integral to the new movie as it was to the original. The story for our film is not focused on just one main character but rather a journey with an ensemble cast of Roughnecks fighting against the bugs. It was essential to us to add some diversity in order to create an interesting dynamic between familiar characters and some that are brand new to the ST universe. At times, it may resemble some of the old war movies we all grew up on, but if that’s the sacrifice to get to grittier characters and a heavier story – then so be it.

The story centers around 2 teams of Roughnecks: the Alpha 1 team embarking on a mission to rescue Fort Casey and the K-12 team already stationed at Fort Casey. The two war-depleted squads must band together with a common objective, but personalities and ambition ensure a bumpy ride.

Flint came up with a variety of characters and story elements that will harken back to the archetypes ubiquitous in your favorite Sci-Fi, War, and Action/Adventure movies. We have an old loyal lieutenant, a quiet gladiator-type hero, a not-so-smart but straight-forward meathead, a creepy unlucky guy, a grim explosives expert, a Zen religious master, a handsome womanizer, a psychic horny scout, a hot girl sniper, a tough beautiful single mom, and so on — along with some returning characters. Safe to say, it will get dicey!

There is one character who will be at the center: Major Henry Varro, nickname Hero. He was the commander of the K-12 team at Fort Casey, but he is arrested for insubordination by Dr Carl Jenkins. He is a prisoner on the ship Alesia as he is being transported to Earth for court marshal. While it’s not immediately apparent why he’s perceived as a threat, we do know that he retains the respect and admiration of all those that served under him. His experience, in combination with the undying trust of the troopers, is an asset the Federation won’t be able to survive without indefinitely…

Here is a snapshot of how he looks.

We are planning to put up some character profiles soon so stay tuned!

Starship John A. Warden

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:09:00 -0500

Some people may be wondering about the origin of this ship’s name. It’s derived from Mr. John A. Warden III, a retired US Air Force colonel. He changed the course of history during his days at Pentagon, especially the first Gulf War. I cannot fully explain all of his accomplishments and career so I asked our friend Flint Dille who came up with the idea. Here is his unedited comment:

Ed Neumeier and I met John A. Warden when he was Commandant at the Air Force Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama—a kind of graduate school for top mid-level officers. In any case, Ed smuggled me an invite to a conference called ‘Connections.’ It was a visionary idea at the time. The idea was for the Air Force to talk to people in the film and game industries to encourage creative thinking. I figured the conference was going to be about how to get better graphics for simulators, or better A.I. or something like that. Then, while we were talking to Col. John A. Warden at the icebreaker, he said, ‘what would the effect on the enemy be if a giant hologram of Nebuchadnezzar emerged in the desert saying, ‘Saddam Hussein is a false prophet, a blasphemer’ — or some such. I realized, at that moment we were on a whole different ride.

We talked about things like deploying food from the air rather than bombs — applying nitrogen to the situation. That kind of things.

Then, I discovered that John A. Warden had been the architect of the Air Campaign in the first gulf war. Wow! It was him that was behind the fact that Saddam Hussein had no command and control of his troops after the first 7 minutes of the attack and that’s why the army didn’t do anything.

There were more connections conferences and over the years we got to know John well. I even collaborated with him on a game. Three publishers died on that journey, but as recently as yesterday, we were talking about using some of those ideas in an iPad strategy game.

Anyway, John A. Warden is the real deal. The real deal. He’s probably the most brilliant strategist alive. Nowadays, he is consulting corporations on how to reverse engineer his 5 Rings Strategy in order to build (reverse the destruction process to build a system). It is and has been an honor to know him. Since heroes don’t get airplanes named after them, the way Admirals get ships named after them, we figured it would be fitting to name a Starship after him. After all, he’s half way into the future most of the time, anyway.

Hence, the John A. Warden.

Flint

Amazing, isn’t it? So, our story revolves around this ship and thus his name will be called out many times. For more information on Mr Warden, please refer to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venturist-Inc/131606206894849?sk=wall.

As for the design of the ship, as previously mentioned, it is in line with the former ones but with much more firepower. It also happens to look a little like a Bug. Below are the conceptual designs.

Enjoy and much more to come! Happy New Year and prepare for Summer!!!

Starships

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:24:00 -0500

As the title implies, the ships are an integral part of the Starship Troopers universe. Likewise, political commentary was a key element of both the original Heinlein novel and the original Starship Troopers movies we all know and love. The starship name Rodger Young, used in both the novel and the movie, is homage to a WWII Medal of Honor recipient. Fittingly, the creative wizards of the first movie designed a ship that is so badass that she is still praised and referenced by sci-fi fans.

For the new movie, we wanted to focus on a pair of ships that have broken off from the main fleet: a big starship called John A. Warden, and a small fast-attack ship called Alesia. Alesia’s name is derived from the Battle of Alesia in Eastern France where Vercingetorix surrendered to Julius Caesar. The Starship Alesia is home to the Roughnecks Alpha Team and is tasked with escorting the John A. Warden from Fort Casey back to Earth. We also gave other ships historical names like “Sheridan” (Civil War) and “Franklin” (as in Benjamin).

The design process started with the original designs from the previous movies. We decided to keep the overall sleek and stylish designs and revamped them with updated guns and cannons as well as containers and cranes. Check out the conceptual design/sketch of Alesia and the work-in-progress below.

That’s all for 2011. Will come back early 2012 with new updates, including more about the John A. Warden. Until then, Best Wishes!

Story & Script

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:33:00 -0500

So I can’t completely spoil the story/details yet but I would like to share the process we went through.

We got together with the producers and production executives as well as the director to discuss various ideas for the story. In the course of discussion, a heated debate broke out on how the bugs are able to travel. They can obviously walk; some can fly…but with wings…and thus not likely to be able to fly through space. The bugs in the novel had advanced technology, but the ones in the previous films were fairly unsophisticated. As we were already inclined to position this new film to be in line with the universe of the live action adaptation, we knew we couldn’t have the bugs build any sort of ship capable of interstellar travel. The first movie showed them sending the meteor to earth that destroyed New Buenos Aires, but the bugs were not on that meteor. I cannot reveal our direction yet but please feel free to use your imagination on how a bug can travel through space. In any case, we figured it out and the story developed organically from there.

Starship Troopers is based on the novel by Robert A Heinlein and it was then adapted to live action movies with Ed Neumeier’s scripts. This time out, we wanted to go fresh and not replicate either the novel or the previous live action films. We functionally asked ourselves who we were making the film for – who loves vast space battles, vicious hand-to-hand, dazzling CG, and a character-driven, military-based story arc? Basically anyone that’s playing the current popular console video games. To me, the battle scenes from the first Starship Troopers movie felt like a team death match from an FPS game and that vibe definitely carried forward to the development of this film. Lots of action, lots of collaboration between soldiers with specialized skill sets. We were discussing writers and Joseph suggested a great writer who has worked on some of the Sci-Fi action games, Mr. Flint Dille.

Flint looks like Thor: big dude with a thick reddish beard, hearty laugh, and very deep voice. But he talks like a kid who has been on the PS3 the whole day (in fact, he left early from a meeting with the excuse that he had to go pick up his son to try a new war-action FPS game that shall not be named here). We fell in love with his cool ways (not just as a screenwriter but all he does) and we started working together on the script. Joseph and I were driving the base story structure and Flint was formulating and injecting great sequences of human drama and camaraderie as well as the gritty action – all with the wit and sarcasm that made Starship Troopers so popular.

Now, maybe that’s enough of my B.S. and I should at least give you a sneak peek?

There is a Federation outpost named Fort Casey that will appear at the beginning of the movie on an asteroid near a planet being attacked by the bugs. The name of the fort is homage to our executive producer Ed Neumeier and his son. And, here is a preliminary sketch of the fort’s design. Enjoy !

Stay tuned for more fun back stories and sneak peeks to come!

Greenlight

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:54:00 -0500

After 3 movies by legendary creative minds, I wanted the Starship Troopers franchise to continue on but with a new direction. Luckily, the former movies did not fully decrypt the power suits from the original novel by Robert A Heinlein. When I realized this, it gave me a spark of idea. The gentleman I met at Comicon, Mr. Shinji Aramaki, is known for his realistic yet stylish mechanical designs, and he did design some power suits in his past works (e.g. Appleseed). He would be the perfect person to re-imagine the power suits for Starship Troopers! I eagerly proposed this idea to Joseph and Mr. Aramaki and I got a very positive response — with even a quick initial sketch by Mr. Aramaki (See picture below. Just to be clear, this is not the final version as it will be more badass). I was excited and happy with the idea but bringing that further to a movie that the fans would enjoy was not that simple, and it was even more difficult to convince the big bosses. I won’t bore you with the details of what happened during the process but it was a tough fight and I lost a few troopers on the way.

Once we got the greenlight, we started discussing what the fans would want to see. We asked many experts, the original filmmakers as well as the younger generations and the fans. The challenge was that everyone had different opinion and different likes and dislikes. Some loved the satire in the movie but some did not. Some thought it was too cheesy but some thought that was the best part. After extensive debate, it seemed like everyone wanted something with more action in space and with bugs, and more relationships decrypted in the first movie. We felt that we needed the camaraderie in the vein of war movies such as Black Hawk Down or in the vein of war games like Company of Heroes, but in space with a horror & thriller feel with the inspiration of classic alien movies. And, even though we would be toning down on the cheese, we need to keep some of the spirit of fun and comical satire. Even for a CGI-only production, we were somewhat daunted by the challenge of a well balanced story & dialogue, and the scope of the action sequences and vast bug battles. But we really wanted to get this right for the fans. So the struggles continued to the next stage to pull out a good script and cool designs. Will write about that in the next updates with some sneak peak of the new designs so, stay tuned!

Trooper's blog #1 - Prologue

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:40:00 -0400

17:00 July 25th, 2009. I was swimming through the crowded floor of the San Diego convention center to find my next rendezvous. I finally found my friend and producer Joseph Chou escorting another gentleman. The gentleman (which is the perfect word for it) had a very calm demeanor but with a hint of charisma and he bowed to me in a casual yet formal Japanese style. After the formal greetings (the usual Japanese name cards exchange), he opened his laptop and showed me a sneak peek – which was way more than just sneak peek – of a space battle sequence and explained passionately about what he would be able to do. That’s how I met Mr. Shinji Aramaki. He’s one of the best anime directors and is known for the great action direction and futuristic mechanical designs seen in Appleseed, Ex-Machina, and Halo Legend.

For the first time, the dream of producing a CGI film of Starship Troopers started to feel like it could become a reality; still the road ahead was far from paved. You will soon hear about the bumpy journey to make this happen and I can’t wait to share this final, most exhilarating leg of the journey…but that will have to wait until my next blog!

To share a little fun right now, I am going to give you a quick glimpse behind the curtain. We had several ideas about the teaser poster design and the director sketched around 10 different ideas on his iPad. I personally witnessed him drawing one at lunch time during our motion-capture session right in front of me! It was amazing to see this master draw something so casually and so fast.

Although we felt this look of a starship pierced by bug claw in this photo was very iconic, we ultimately went in another direction. We really want this installment of the Starship Troopers franchise to be known for its action, grit, and mind-blowing space battles. So we then asked an elite illustrator to come in and create this haunting, for-the-fans poster. His name is Mr. Hidetaka Tenjin – check his work out at http://www.studio-tenjin.com/welcome.html . Hope you like the great artistic details and lighting.

Would you like to know more? Join up the mobile infantry now and sign up for update! Do your part to win this war against the bugs!

Trooper T.