How HaZ Dulull made a feature-length animated film in Unreal Engine and accidentally made a video game, too

How the pandemic affected creatives in the entertainment industry

For many creatives working in the entertainment industry, the global pandemic was an unexpected roadblock that brought their projects to a grinding halt and a clear signal that any new ideas they might have were practically dead-on-arrival.

HaZ Dulull, an independent filmmaker and founder of HaZimation, started to gain traction and success with feature-length sci-fi films The Beyond and 2036 Origin Unknown as well as the Disney+ series - Fast Layne when he was forced to confront the reality of how he was going to stay relevant in an industry where you quickly become irrelevant if you’re not putting out new content.

Making new content amid uncertainty

The answer was to do the seemingly impossible and to make new content anyways.

The saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” seems appropriate to describe the situation Haz found himself in when he made the decision that now was a good a time as any to try something new and flex his background in VFX and video games animation to make his next film entirely in Unreal Engine.

From pre-vis to feature film: How HaZ Dulull utilized Unreal Engine to create "Rift"

Haz had been using Unreal Engine to do pre-vis for other projects and was impressed by how quickly he could render his shots with full shading, reflections, shadows, and ray tracing. He had been doing pre-vis CGI for over a decade and this was nothing like the t-poses sliding across a floor in a grey void that he was used to.

Emboldened by the success of the sizzle trailer for the animated movie adaptation of the game Mutant Year Zero, HaZ started to believe that making a film in Unreal Engine was within the realm of possibility. At the time, nobody was sure if he and his team could pull it off.

“There was a script I had that was just un-shootable in live-action without an insane James Cameron-level budget,” HaZ says of the project that would become ‘Rift’ on the Clear As Mud podcast, “and my producing/business partner Paula Crickard said, “well if you’re gonna make an animated film, why not make one that is so batshit crazy to do that it only makes sense in the animation medium?”

‘Rift’ is an animated feature film that explores the story of a marine with PTSD who attempts to save his little brother Max, but keeps failing, and we soon realize that Max can jump into different universes with the hope he finds the one reality where Leon does save him. It’s the kind of ambitious project with a scope impossible to realize without major financial backing from a big Hollywood studio, and certainly not the kind of project you expect an independent filmmaker to make during a pandemic.

Figuring they had nothing to lose at the time, HaZ and his CG Lead artist - Andrea Tedechi, set out to make a ten-minute test for ‘Rift’ and just didn’t tell anyone that it was a proof-of-concept. Sometimes, when setting out to attempt the impossible, it’s best to just keep that fact a secret.

Amazingly, it worked. It worked really, really well.

HaZ and his team ended up getting an Epic MegaGrant, and several sponsorships allowing them to grow the team. Suddenly they were involved in a full-scale production in Unreal Engine. A year and a half later, They were getting recognition from unexpected places and were offered to premiere their film at the Oscar accredited - SPARK ANIMATION Festival in Vancouver.

Breaking the stigma: Overcoming the challenge of making a video game engine look like an animated feature

HaZ found that the hardest thing to do wasn’t the animation itself, but finding a unique style that didn’t feel like it was a video game cinematic. Perhaps one of the biggest issues holding back filmmakers who want to make their films in Unreal Engine is that it's difficult to escape the stigma that if you’re using a video game engine, it’s going to look like a video game.

The solution ended up being to lean into stylization and avoid trying to produce the hyper-realistic style typically associated with AAA video game cutscenes. The film benefits from evoking the feeling of animated features we’ve come to expect from Disney shows being juxtaposed with the more anime-style adult content.

Making the film was an entirely different kind of experience for HaZ and his team. They piggybacked on Epic’s mantra to “democratize animation” and took an all-hands-on-deck approach to remote filmmaking. Epic, the North Carolina-based software and video games company responsible for Unreal Engine has challenged creators in recent years to use their engine to empower small teams like HaZimation to accomplish these kinds of large-scale productions.

Progress over perfection: How HaZimation's all-hands-on-deck approach to remote filmmaking led to success in creating ‘Rift’

HaZ and his team established their own rule in the studio: “Progress over perfection.” All of the shots were done as first passes, sometimes with the early version of the asset, and then later were replaced with higher-resolution versions, then the shot would go through constant iterations. Nobody on the team was bottlenecked by waiting for something to happen - they were building all of their characters while the writer Stavros Pamballis was still working on the script with HaZ - establishing an unprecedented workflow in animation.

The team didn’t do any composites. Instead, they went for a “Final Pixels” approach, where they could see exactly what they were working on in Unreal Engine exactly as it would be seen. They could hold video meetings remotely and make changes to elements like lighting in real-time, without having to wait hours for shots to render.

Artists were able to work on all of the characters in the same lighting that they would appear in the shot, and the style of animation could develop both organically and collectively. They developed all sorts of irreplaceable elements of their characters and scenes collaboratively, learning small tricks and tips by sharing information and learning from the robust online community.

They went back and forth for close to a year on achieving the look of “painting with” light that they were going for, referencing CG anime like Pacific Rim for inspiration. But all the while, while they were making these changes, the movie was still getting made.

HaZ found the process, from a directorial perspective, extraordinarily liberating. They effectively removed the bottleneck of production and were working with a sense of togetherness as a team that defied any physical isolation the pandemic imposed on them.

Processes that could take a week would be done in a single Zoom session, and at the end of it, everyone would be on the same page. “It’s going to be hard to go back to live-action filmmaking now,” HaZ admits. “You’re not limited by so many restrictions such as daylight!.”

The process isn’t completely divorced from the realities of traditional filmmaking. For an animated film to be successful at all, you’re going to need solid voice and motion-capture actors. It doesn’t matter how visually impressive your film might be, if the voice actors are off, nobody is going to watch it.

The most important thing to consider as a producer is how you are going to get your movie seen. You have to be aware of your audience first and foremost.

HaZ and his team decided that since they were making the film in Unreal Engine, they expected their audience to include gamers and people in the gaming industry, so they decided to lean into that when looking for their voice actors. The star power behind the film includes Dave Fennoy (The Walking Dead) and BAFTA award-winning actor Jane Perry (Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman).

From animated features to Metaverse content: How HaZimation became a multi-branch business

In the process of making ‘Rift’, HaZ and his team accidentally ended up making a video game. It sounds crazy, but one weekend he and his team decided to take a break from their hyper-productiveness and have a game jam session in Unreal Engine. They took the existing characters and assets, migrated them to a game project setup very quickly, and soon did immersive things in gameplay which was a ton of fun. Eventually, they realized that they had so much unused material from making the film that they could make a game out of it which fit the multi-universe and branch narrative plot structure.

Still maintaining the mindset that they had nothing to lose, they put a playable demo together and decided to put it on Steam as an early-access demo. Because so much work had already gone into the project from working on Rift, everyone assumed they were making a AAA game. The demo led them to get accepted into Microsoft’s independent developer's program (ID:Xbox) and suddenly they had their foot in the door as a gaming studio with Xbox dev kits sent to them.

Finding success: How HaZ and his team made a video game out of the unused material from the film 'Rift'

Recognizing they were just a small indie studio already heavily invested in making a film, HaZ had to reassess what kind of game they were going to make that can be done with their team and resources, Sam Rebelo, the team’s game designer, and environment artist pitched the idea of going with an episodic approach, and HaZ immediately took to that idea and structured the production of RIFT to producing smaller chapters of the story as each game to be released, a similar approach to TellTale games, to be realistic in their scope and maintain the high slick quality throughout, without burning out the team.

Haz was inspired by fond memories of arcade games like Castlevania and set out to make a game that reflects the 90s retro simple game mechanics of run, gun, and shoot with today’s high quality, high fidelity flair of next-gen consoles that were possible to achieve in Unreal Engine.

“Through using Unreal to do an animated project, we ended up towards video games and also Metaverse content,” HaZ reflects on the project, “and now, as a company, we have multiple branches of businesses, which allows our artists to stay not only fresh and relevant but also not bored.”

Maintaining drive and surrounding oneself with good people

HaZ believes that whatever you set out to do in life, to accomplish it, you have to maintain your drive throughout the whole project. He finds that drive by looking up to people that are doing the kind of work he aspires to and surrounding himself with good people who help him to achieve those aspirations.

Before setting up the company, HaZimation, he worked with his business partner Paula Crickard on his second film and knew they already had a good shorthand. She is a talented producer in her own right and an industry veteran who is naturally better at things like putting together a budget and schedule and navigating the film industry as a producer.

To have creative success you have to have pillars of support, people who have your back and who can help to set up the infrastructure and technology that enables your crazy ideas to become a reality, or in often cases, offer a different perspective to achieving that vision from a business point of view.

Being involved in any kind of creative endeavor involves a certain amount of risk, especially when making your IP, and you need to be realistic about it. HaZ has made sure when setting up the company with Paula, that they have enough money set aside and a proper exit strategy and is confident that if all of this fails he and his team can pivot and be okay.

As macabre as it might sound, HaZ is intrigued by hearing about other people’s failures. He wants to normalize people talking about their failures because in those stories there is often a nugget of wisdom to learn from about how to recover and bounce back.

As an artist, you are bound to make all kinds of mistakes in the process and each of those mistakes provides an opportunity to learn and grow. It’s better, to be honest with yourself and be comfortable with the idea that everything you make might not work out, and that’s okay. You shouldn’t let that fear hold you back from trying something new, even if it might seem impossible.

“You’re making art, and art is subjective. Once you get your mind around that, you’re bulletproof. People are going to either love it or hate it,” HaZ says. “Make the best movie that you want to make, the best way that you can make it, and after that, it's down to things that are out of your control.”

HaZ is doing just that and based on the success of Rift, which premiered at the SPARK ANIMATION festival in Vancouver on October 29, 2022, it seems unlikely that he will need to use that exit strategy anytime soon.

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