Sometimes an artist comes along whose work goes beyond inspiration. To me, James Harren is one such artist. His incredible style, energy and artistic vision shines through on everything he does. The forms and shapes he makes speak directly to that part of my brain that makes my imagination run wild whenever I look at his art. When I discovered Ultramega, I knew instantly that I wanted to make something in tribute to it. What’s not to love about a parasitic alien life force thats locked in an eternal cosmic battle with a neverending army of equally parasitic Kaiju? Arms with mouths for hands? A mouth riddled with teeth that opens to reveal another mouth instead of a tongue? A giant larvae with 8 arms and razor sharp teeth? Yes and yes. 

GHOSTS is a tribute to the original animated short "Hashiru Otoko" created by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. This anime had a tremendous impact on me early in life, and was my gateway into other classics such as Vampire Hunter D, Wicked City, and Ninja Scroll. It's with the utmost respect and admiration for Kawajiri-san's inspiring work that I chose to make this film.

Drawing from the original comic series “Ultramega” by James Harren, alongside a healthy dose of early ninetees anime, I dreamed up KAIJU KLASH! The Ultramega falls crashing back to earth, and compelled by the alien entity within his chest, succumbs to a blood rage, battles two giant kaiju, slicing one in half, disinitegrating the other, and most of the city along with it. It was an insane amount of fun to make and every frame in every shot was lovingly scrutinized. 

The story of Racer 37, Zach Hughes, and the fall of the Death Circus is one told with a level of abstraction and artistry that I've always connected with. Like every great story, the viewer is given a certain amount of freedom to inject their own interpretation of what transpires. Zach's power is never fully understood, his demise never explained.

Beyond the craftmanship in the comic series is an incredible sense of energy throughout. It was really important for me to continue that thread as much as possible, both in the way things were designed and presented, but also in the pacing and the use of color and sound. 

The look and feel of GHOSTS represents my personal vision for a mix of artistic mediums. As well as a painterly hand-made feel I sought to blend it all together with the cinematic qualities of CG. Together they form a unique visual format, excelling as a vehicle for animation and story telling.

Each shot needed to flow effortlessly into the next, in the same way a comic book keeps the readers attention, guiding them from panel to panel. 

With a clear focus on energy, contrast and emotional impact, every frame was painstakingly designed to ensure that no matter where you pause, each image could live on its own as a solitary work of art.

As always, everything starts with rough sketches in my sketchbook. A loose collection of ideas and beats I want to hit along with various bits and pieces from the reference material that could be useful or impactiful. 

From hand painted background and matte paintings, to 2D FX, smoke and clouds, a blend of CG and 2D elements were composited together to shape the look and feel of each shot. This extends to animation as well, with CG animation being mixed with frame by frame hand-drawn elements.

I leveraged old and new techniques for this project, learning lots of new things along the way. All characters, creatures and environments were modeled or sculpted, textured, rigged and animated from scratch. I used a combination of ZBrush and Substance Painter to flesh out the characters, Cascadeur and Rokoko for a combination of mocap and hand keyed animation, Octane and C4D for the final scene assembley, and then comped using ACES in Adobe After Effects. 

Just as an illustrator struggles to maintain the energy of their first expressive lines into the final piece, I too wanted to maintain the energy and emotion in a raw state without being too focused on visual fidelity.

Forcing myself to not move on to any production art before the animatic was solid, I kept to my original roadmap, preserving the energy and emotion from my earliest ideas into the final outcome.

Using the C4D Octane Toon shader as the base, I built a custom node shader for all the characters, most importantly the UltraMega. It includes a dynamic halftone effect paired with several noise parameters to accentuate a hand drawn look and feel. All textures were painted in Substance Painter in keeping with a bold graphic style. 

Along with smoke and clouds, I hand animated all the dynamic light streaks that are ever so present in Kawajari-san's films. Cigarette smoke, as well as speed and action lines, were also animated frame by frame at 24 fps. Using Photoshop I painted all the 2D elements over pre-rendered composites of the shots. This way I could match the movement of the camera shake and adjust to changing lighting setups already present in the scene.

I constantly referenced the comic for style cues and inspiration. Harren’s use of halftones and expressive lines is all throughout his work so it was important for me to try to achieve something that had a similar effect.

Starting with rough thumbnails at first, I decided to try to achieve a really tight animatic before moving into production. This allowed me to stay loose and move quite quickly in the moment, while the ideas were still fresh.

From my initial sketchbook thumbnails I painted my storyboards in photoshop, considering my compositions, camera choices and initial motion and viewer focus. I then brought it all into After Effects where I further developed my lens choices, fx, camera shake and focus etc. I then cut it all together with an audio scratch track in Premiere, for my final animatic.

Rigged and ready to go, I acted out most of the animation using mocap and a Rokoko suit. I then refined it in Cascadeur before bringing it into C4D.

As with any project, GHOSTS started with weeks of rigorous research. Being a bit of an obscure anime, Running Man was not an easy film to find original drawings and production art from.

The kaiju were incredibly fun and rewarding to design. Harren’s kaiju designs are some of my favorite creations I have ever seen but I wanted to create my own original creatures and have them still exist in the original Ultramega universe. 

Along with smoke and clouds, I hand animated all the dynamic light streaks that are ever so present in Kawajari-san's films. Cigarette smoke, as well as speed and action lines, were also animated frame by frame at 24 fps. Using Photoshop I painted all the 2D elements over pre-rendered composites of the shots. This way I could match the movement of the camera shake and adjust to changing lighting setups already present in the scene.

Using ZBrush to quickly iterate, the kaiju came together fairly fast, with some versions not making the cut for the final. They were then painted in Substance Painter, refined with the custom halftone Toon Shader in Octane, and finally rigged and hand animated in C4D. 

Starting with rough thumbnails at first, I decided to try to achieve a really tight animatic before moving into production. This allowed me to stay loose and move quite quickly in the moment, while the ideas were still fresh.

From my initial sketchbook thumbnails I painted my storyboards in photoshop, considering my compositions, camera choices and initial motion and viewer focus. I then brought it all into After Effects where I further developed my lens choices, fx, camera shake and focus etc. I then cut it all together with an audio scratch track in Premiere, for my final animatic.

After rigging in C4D I created a detailed set of controllers for keyframe animation. For the biped Kaiju, I used a combo of inverse kinematics and dynamics tags for the body, face and arm motion. 

As with any project, GHOSTS started with weeks of rigorous research. Being a bit of an obscure anime, Running Man was not an easy film to find original drawings and production art from.

The larvae kaiju had a bit more of a complex rig, as I needed the fingers and arms to be expressive.

As with any project, GHOSTS started with weeks of rigorous research. Being a bit of an obscure anime, Running Man was not an easy film to find original drawings and production art from.

Referencing heavily from the source material, the onomatopoeia plays a big role in the impact of certain shots. I love opportunites to implement more hand drawn elements into my scenes, and making these were a lot of fun. 

The character of Zach was a combination of a base mesh from Character Creator, brought into Zbrush and sculpted into the likeness of Zach's original design. His racing suit, gloves, boots and peripherals were a combination of Zmodeler and hand sculpted elements in Zbrush. Hand and facial details were painted in Photoshop.

As always I also created a number of posters to go along with the short. In this case I made some Japanese variants in keeping with the origins of the original character. 

To promote the release of the film, a trailer was made. I also created a number of posters and other imagery.

Created + Directed by _ Kris Brady

Sound _ CYPHER

Sound Design + Mix _ John Black

Music _ Joris Van Grunsven

Created + Directed by _ Kris Brady

Sound _ CYPHER

Sound Design + Mix _ John Black

Music _ Joris Van Grunsven