“Harmonix Rock Band II” is a 90-second cinematic using After FX. trailer which introduces the updated game. Set to the classic anthem “Hello There” by Cheap Trick it issues the challenge to gamers, “Are you ready to rock?” The hero band from the “Rock Band I” trailer reprises its role in the film and engages in a car-rooftop stand off with a new rival group in a high-energy battle of the bands.
The band characters, which were designed by director Pete Candeland, are stylized, but are also quite realistic in terms of being threedimensional people who need to move naturalistically, and with a lot of detail in their clothes, hair etc. The props, such as the cars and the American desert backgrounds, also needed to match the same level of detail and authenticity as the detailing in the characters. Added to this, there were two bands instead of the one in the original film, giving eight characters in total, which immediately increased the amount of work that was involved. All these factors meant that a sizeable, specialist crew needed to be gathered together for the project.
It was decided to use motion capture to assist the animation process of the band characters, and we worked with Audio Motion Studios to produce the footage for animators to work to. Director Pete Candeland cast four actors, who played the characters in both bands. Takes of the DV footage that was filmed were selected and BVH files were made that were imported into XSi for animation. Lip synch was also really important for the film, and for this we worked with Image Metrics, who filmed the facial mocap shots.
The characters were modeled using Modo and animated in XSi. In total we had a crew of around 50, including modelers, riggers, animators, VFX artists, compositors, render wranglers and matte painters. The animation was rendered using Mental Ray and composited using After FX.

Pete Candeland (AU/US) grew up in Australia, where he was hired by Disney straight from high school in 1991 after they saw his drawing skills. Since then he has lived in London, Toronto and Los Angeles, where he worked on many projects from commercials to feature films. Candeland joined Passion Pictures as an animation director in 2000. For the BBC's coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games he has recently teamed up with Jamie Hewlett again to direct Journey to the East.