Buzz Blitz: Full Yellow Jacket
2020 was a rough year for everyone, so I wanted to offer a little levity to those hard-working Georgia Tech students in the form of an April Fools prank featuring the soon-to-be released online brawler “Buzz Blitz: Full Yellow Jacket”. My plan was to coordinate it with the social media team at Institute Communications and release it as if it were real, then lead bemused viewers to a web page revealing the gag.
I’d been wanting to create a Buzz rig for some time, as a way to teach myself character modeling, texturing and rigging, and what better way to use it than in a game trailer, with Buzz running, blasting, flipping and jumping his way across campus?
Original “gameplay footage” animated entirely in Cinema4D.
Next up, I needed to get Buzz into the action. I went ahead and built a scene in Cinema4D, animated some run cycles, projectiles and other elements. Things were looking really good, but I knew this process was way too complicated for multiple shots and revisions, and I didn’t want the project to bog itself down. I’d been hearing so much about how people are making their own games in Unreal Engine and Unity. Maybe it was finally time to check it out?
Learning Unreal Engine.
Two things about Unreal that were the deciding factor for me: 1. No coding required (lol) and 2. FREE
I knew Buzz Blitz should be a mobile-friendly, top down shooter, and to my delight, the team at Unreal created a twin-stick shooter tutorial as part of their educational courses! After the course, I knew it was possible for me to build a working prototype and get actual gameplay footage for the edit, rather than having to animate every single element by hand.
The next part was the methodical slog through wanting a feature, researching how to do it, shoehorning it into my blueprints, wondering why this other thing isn’t working now, making that work, then repeating the cycle. My hat is off to all the coders out there who do this on a regular basis.
Bobby Dodd Stadium!
Yep, there’s a whole Tech Tower that’s barely in the final cut.
As the ball got rolling, I was having a lot of fun watching it all come together, and it was a great feeling when I took the gameplay footage I captured and finally got to start playing with it in Premiere. Adding music and sound effects, graphics, it’s really coming together! Let’s pitch it!
“It’s too violent”
“It’s too violent.” womp womp!
Unfortunately, the higher ups were concerned about the image of students shooting at each other on campus, and while I was disappointed, I do understand where they’re coming from, especially as part of a public institution. Also, to make for a better read, I left out the fact I pitched my CD early in the process and he warned me ahead of time about that very concern.
Overall, I moved forward because it was one of those projects I think people will still get a kick out of, and it gave me the opportunity to learn an enormous amount of new skills that can be put to use in the future. Huge respect for the folks at Unreal for creating an incredible piece of software.
And who knows? Maybe some enterprising GT student will pick up the reins and finish the game!