Montage of Halo Wars cinematics from 2008
In 2007-2008 I had the privilege of working on cinematics for Ensemble's Halo Wars RTS game at Blur Studio .
My role was Co-CG supervisor which was sort of an AD, project manager and lead artist role. My Co-CG supervisor Dave Wilson shared those duties but also was the uncredited director of the cinematics.
This project was a definite career highlight. We worked hard, built great work with a great team dynamic and created something that I am still very proud of - 15 years later. I will not to try to list all the talent on these - I wouldn't remember to credit everyone anyway. Many went on to do even greater things but I hope others remember the project as warmly as I do.
It was a pity that the game itself was a little bit doomed from the get go. Microsoft bought Ensemble before the games release and already before the release it was announced that there would be no support later on. This must have impacted the finishing polish on the game itself and meant that there was no real marketing push. A lot of the Ensemble team dispersed because Microsoft was being Microsoft and the operations moved from Texas to Seattle IIRC. It was a real pity as Ensemble had a track record of great games and Halo Wars deserved better. The book Blood, Sweat and Pixels gives an interesting insight to that period (which largely was not visible to us at the time).
We did something like 23 minutes of CG cutscenes. This montage was edited by Dave Wilson so we could have something shorter and thus more presentable to showcase the work internally etc.
The soundtrack is from Transformers - I hope it gets to stay here ad supported even though it's mashing up two IPs by different owners.