The guys at Budget Monks Productions never dreamed that Broken Saints, the web comic they were putting together in their spare time, would be anything more than a short prestige piece designed to show off their skills. “It was supposed to be a small, three-month project we would do on the side,” says Ian Kirby, technical director and one of three artists with the Vancouver, Canada-based company.
But the comic took off like wildfire, and today it's available in a four-disc DVD box set—a product which Kirby says he and his colleagues wouldn't have been able to create without the use of Combustion software. “Combustion helped in so many ways,” Kirby says. “It solved every problem we encountered when converting this comic from something that was being shown online to something that was of DVD quality.”
The studio's flagship project, Broken Saints is an anime-style, 12-hour fantasy-horror epic that follows four strangers as they endure a series of chilling apocalyptic visions. As the strangers are simultaneously drawn to a dark city in the West, they discover that their fates—and the fate of the world—are somehow tied to a global satellite network, a massive conspiracy, and a mysterious orphan girl with a terrifying secret.
Kirby and his Budget Monks colleagues—executive producer/writer/director Brooke Burgess, who also founded the company, and art director Andrew West—began creating Broken Saints in 2000, drawing each frame by hand on a Wacom tablet hooked up to their PCs. In January 2001, they launched the comic online as a series of short, Flash-animated movies. “Shortly after we went online with it, we began to get a following, and then it started growing very fast,” Kirby recalls. “People around the world were constantly writing to us, telling us how much they were enjoying it and saying there was no long-form storytelling on the Web similar to what we were creating.”
During the next two and a half years, the artists worked exclusively on the project, adding chapters and refining the story line. “We worked seven days a week out of my parents' basement. None of us had jobs; we used our savings to keep this thing alive—just trying to create pure art for the Web as opposed to the toilet humor that was out there,” Kirby says. Since the site was launched, it has received more than 3 million visitors and has developed into a grassroots movement with an army of more than 30,000 hardcore fans from all over the globe.
The artists' first glimmer of commercial success came in 2002, when they won the People's Choice Award at Flash in the Can 2002 and the People's Choice Award for Best Cartoon at Flash Forward 2002. The People's Choice Award at Netfestival Brazil 2003 came next and was followed that same year by a People's Choice Award at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Colorado.
Then, early in 2004, the artists hit pay dirt when they received a grant from Telefilm Canada to fund the development of the now-acclaimed web-noir series into a four-disc DVD box set. Needless to say, they were quite pleased with their success. But they also were faced with a conundrum: how would they quickly and affordably convert and then render the 12-plus hours of footage they already had created for the Web so that it met broadcast specifications—and have it ready for sale by the end of October?
“The web version was the wrong frame rate and the wrong resolution for broadcast, and it wasn't broadcast-safe as far as colors were concerned,” Kirby explains. “We had to come up with a way to convert everything from 20fps—the frame rate we had our Flash animation set to—to 30fps, with field blending. Plus, we had to sample it all to the correct size for broadcast, which meant converting from 530x320 to 720x480, and then rendering the resulting 1.5 million frames—more than 12 hours' worth of footage—to broadcast specs.”
According to Kirby, the only tool that would enable the team to overcome these conversion and rendering challenges was Combustion. “I knew what Combustion was capable of. And in terms of the conversions, it was the only thing available that would enable us to do what we needed to do.
“As for the rendering,” he continues, “a feature film is 2 hours, and this is a four-disc set with probably 16 hours of content comprising 11 ½ hours of chapters rendered in Combustion and 4 ½ hours of behind-the-scenes featurettes and extras, meaning we needed to render the equivalent of eight feature films in a timeframe far shorter than that given for one feature film. But because we have a full license of Combustion, we could install the Autodesk® Backburner™ renderer on as many computers as we wanted. So, we borrowed 13 computers from our friends and installed Backburner on all of them. Kirby says this was a phenomenal and affordable solution for the team, and he adds that there was no other way they could have afforded to render these frames.
It also meant the artists could deal with a last-minute problem with the audio mix quickly and efficiently. “The DVD features 5.1 Dolby surround sound and voice-over narration, and toward the end of the project we ran into a snag with the audio mix where the audio wasn't lining up properly,” Kirby says. “We had to re-render the entire series to get it right. We had 600 hours of rendering to do in about 200 hours. But we were able to do it by borrowing more computers and rendering the frames on our Combustion/Backburner renderfarm.”
In addition to achieving the necessary conversions and rendering all the frames, the artists also relied on Combustion in other ways. As Kirby explains, the four-disc set comprises 24 chapters; for the first eight chapters, the artists created all new art. “We felt these earlier chapters weren't up to snuff for us to release because they looked a little dated,” he says.
While they were creating the new art, the artists realized that in many spots they could enhance the DVD by creating effects as well as entirely new sequences in Combustion. For instance, using the software's new particle effects tool and Re:Flex tool, they added sophisticated particles and morphing effects. “There's a scene where one of the characters, Kamimuru, is falling backward and particles start streaming out of his mouth and eyes,” Kirby explains. “These two shots seamlessly morph into each other as his mouth and eyes open. In the web version we showed this effect as merely a still image that dissolved. It wasn't nearly as powerful as what we were able to do for the DVD. In this case Combustion was great because there's not much out there that offers high-quality particles and morphing in one application.”
The particle effects in Combustion software also came in handy for several dream sequences. “In one of these sequences we wanted to create a dreamlike state where a character is rushing into a church,” Kirby explains. “We created this amazing stained-glass feeling which is distorted with slow motion and brilliant colors shining through. And it's all Combustion,” he says. “These dream sequences were represented as still images in the web version, with nothing more than some color tinting, but thanks to Combustion we were able to redo them as feature film-quality effects.”
In addition, Kirby relied on the Edit Operator in Combustion to assemble the new clips. “I found this tool to be quite useful for cutting together my sequences, and for allowing me to easily change effects if necessary. For instance, I could update one of the particle effects in a section of a sequence, and then go back to the Edit Operator and see it updated. It saved me from having to go into Avid and edit it afterward.”
To preview the new sequences and effects before rendering, the artists relied on Combustion as well. “A real bonus with Combustion is the fact that it has great OpenGL hardware acceleration, which allowed us to check out these new scenes and play them back in almost-real time. And we could use 3D camera movements, which gave us a great sense of depth throughout these scenes,” he says. Kirby notes that the team also relied on Combustion and its OpenGL hardware acceleration when creating the menus for the DVD. “We were able to achieve really in-depth 3D movement, and it's all Combustion and the use of OpenGL to preview the camera movements. I can't believe we faked it so well in Combustion. It was amazing the depth we could get from a 2D picture.”
According to Kirby, the Broken Saints concept won't stop with the DVD release. In fact, not only is it being developed for a next-generation video game console, but also Dark Horse Entertainment has signed a deal with the team to develop the story into a full-color comic book scheduled for availability in summer 2005.
Plus, the team is developing the story into a live-action feature film through Dark Horse Entertainment. Will they rely on Combustion to help bring this film project to fruition? You bet. “We've always wanted to tell stories and to get into film. We did Broken Saints online originally because that was the only way the three of us could reach the most people at the time,” Kirby says.
“But now that we have the DVD under our belts, we're on to bigger projects, and this feature film is one of them,” he concludes. “And for sure, Combustion will play a major role in that project.”
