Origins
Forlorn - A Brief History
Project Forlorn began in earnest in January 2018. I had grown dissatisfied with many aspects of my job at the time and myself creatively, and I was growing frustrated that a portion of my happiness was tied to films and shows that were beyond my control. I began what I called, ironically not so creatively as, “Creativity Tuesdays”, where I would not watch no films or play no games and instead just work on personal projects. In many ways the seeds of the Forlorn world were laid here. I had about three or four disparate ideas kicking around my head at the time, and I began through these days to merge them into one, cut the fat, and craft something I was interested in pursuing. Something with adventure and maybe even a bit of horror thrown in the mix.
One night whilst laying in bed waiting for sleep’s sweet embrace I had, for lack of a better word, a vision. I was looking for something to do in my free time to push myself in terms of Maya and rendering. I wanted to do a short animation with dramatic lighting, particle effect, cloth physics, and realistic textures. I had this gangled, bird-like creature character that had been with me for many years in various forms, and laying in bed that night, I suddenly found the perfect opportunity to bring him to life. The story came to me in an instant, which as a side note is a rare but welcome occurrence. This creature, sitting on a broken throne in a cold and empty room, sees a rose petal blow in on the wind. Stirred, he approaches it, only for the petal to blow out of his hands as he examines it. Enchanted by its mystery, he follows. That is basically all it was, and if you end up seeing what is now the rough prototype version of Forlorn, you’ll see it didn’t change much at all by the end.
For months I toiled away at that tech demo after work, making it something of a second job. In the end I had a small little something to throw on my reel, and that was the end of it. Or so I thought. A question lingered, and soon I could not ignore it - What was outside the room where the creature was sitting? Where was the rose petal leading him? These were questions I wanted to answer. And so, in June of 2018 I began to explore this idea - who was this creature, where was he, and what was going on. My initial ideas were that the petal came from some giant tree beast, and maybe some explorer would enter the story at some point and meet the creature from the initial demo. I don’t recall when it was, but it was around that point that all of the ideas I had been working on flooded into the scene, and soon all the pieces fell into place. The creature became less of a protagonist and more an obstacle, guarding the prize. The explorer became the hero, taking on the character from another idea I had, and the world gained backstory and purpose.
In late July I began to write the treatment, and drafted some of the initial drawings. My drawing skill was never good, and has only gotten worse through lack of practice. If you look you’ll see my first drawing of Kaelis, the main character. Look how long her arms are. It’s disgusting. Luckily for me, these were just for internal ideas and I didn’t have to use them to sell anything to anyone.
At this time I had also saved up enough money to invest in some powerful equipment. Prior to this I had mostly been working off of work computers that my employers at the time were nice enough to let me use. It is also at this point that I began looking into the Unreal Engine in earnest. I have always loved video games and graphics. As a child I would pour over images of new releases, looking at all of the ways visuals had improved in a short amount of time. I recall seeing the animated demo Unreal had created in engine in a movie theater a while prior, and it always stuck with me. Tired of rendering the old fashioned way, and having learned Unreal is a free tool for filmmakers, I dove in. I was on a brief hiatus at the time, and for those 2 weeks I watched every tutorial about every facet of Unreal I could, and used them to recreate a shot from my Maya demo in Engine. After I came back from hiatus, the first thing my job at the time asked was if I had any experience with Unreal, as they had gotten a new project in that utilized it. They were quite pleased to hear I had taught myself those past few weeks in a stroke of sheer coincidence, and while building the rigs for Forlorn at home I worked on an Unreal VR project every day at work, providing invaluable training.
I was toiling away at some of the environments of Forlorn during holiday break of 2018 when I reached a dark point in the project. It had occurred to me that I might have aimed a bit too high. I had began to realize that in its current form it would take me several years to finish what I began, and that nobody would see what I had done anyway. Disheartened, I shelved the project for months, opting instead to come up with something a little smaller in scale.
However, by the end of the spring I had realized that I had already put so much work into the project that it would be foolish to produce nothing at all. And so, I came up with a plan to take the rigs I had made and craft a condensed version of the middle point of the initial story, where Kaelis and the creature first meet. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was working on a film at the time using Unreal which was suddenly cancelled due to a high profile corporate acquisition. Out of a job and with plenty of time, I created the initial cathedral interior environment and animated half of the sequence in about six weeks time.
Once I got steady work again the project slowed down considerably. However, I continued to work on it every spare moment I could find. I was able to finally finish and release the piece in October of 2019. By the time it was finished I was committed to finishing the entire series again, although in a smaller, more truncated form. I planned on making what I had just done part 2 in a 4 part series, with maybe a prologue and epilogue added on later. The idea to release episodically, despite not being my initial intention, proved to be a great motivator and prevents me from fidgeting with things after they’re done. The biggest surprise for me post release was that it was chosen as one of Unreal community spotlight projects for that week. I recall seeing the thumbnail for that video and being really confused for a second, because I didn’t put the video on YouTube. It then occurred to me that the people over at Epic had enjoyed the piece and not only put it in the episode, but made it the thumbnail. Their support has meant so much to me.
However, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the condensed version of things. The story was weaker, the world less complete, and I wouldn’t be able to do some of the things I wanted. So, never one to shy from a challenge and now deeply invested in this world, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go back to my initial concept. 4 episodes became 7, (maybe 8, the last part is gonna be big), and with the exception of me merging 2 environments together and changing the macguffin, everything was the same as it was in 2018.
Despite things being the same, I still basically changed everything. I had learned so much that I decided to completely remake the main character and all of her props. While doing that I created an entire city and a new creature, and with the advancements made to Unreal Engine after the raytracing updates I upgraded the engine to utilize those aspects as well. And as of now the 2 interior sets I had built I am now completely renovating with new and improved geometry and textures.
As of this post, Forlorn Part I is finished, with Part II on the way. It’s been a wild 2 years, and I expect it will be a wild 2 more.
