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French
Martin Klekner has unveiled Heroes of Bronze: The Memory, an animated short film he’s been working on for the last 4 years. This film is focused on the Greco-Persian war period.
Martin Klekner explains that his goal when creating Heroes of Bronze was to highlight an ere that “is sorely missing from today’s film and animation world”. He adds that he wanted to depict it as historically accurate as possible, even though, since he’s not a historian, he is well aware that he probably made errors. Still, he explains, he hopes he was able to capture the spirit of this period.
Here is the short film:
The year is 486 BC, three years after the Greek victory at Marathon. The united armies of Athens and Platea met the Persians and against all odds, drove them back. The victory was complete, thousands of Persians left dead on the field of battle. Only a few hundred Athenian citizens lost their lives to the enemy. Among them, Nikephoros, an Athenian trierarch, who – along with his crew – sacrificed himself to help hold the center line of the line.
Nikephoros’ son Alkaios never saw his father return from the battle. Only stories came back. Only memories of the man. Now, each Metageitnion he keeps coming back, watching the magnificent armor of his fallen father. He remembers the men of Marathon, longs to become like them. The armor is still too big for him, the kopis and aspis still too heavy. Yet he keeps training. Each year, he gets taller and stronger. It is just a matter of time before he dons his father’s cuirass – and sets on his own path.
Martin Klekner explains: “I put together majority of the scenes and assets in Blender, where I also rendered the shots. To help the process, however, it helped to use a lot of other specialized tools. Absolutely essential for character meshes and animation was Reallusion’s Character Creator and iClone, as well as the Rokoko suit for capturing my own animations. I employed Marvelous Designer for cloth simulations and Substance Painter for texturing most of the assets. The Adobe package served well in postproduction and editing, I used Photoshop for still images, After Effects for compositing the shots and Premiere for editing the video.”
He also published a breakdown of his short film Heroes of Bronze: The Memory:
Martin Klekner also explains that he plans to continue this project, but that it will largely depend on the support he receives on Patreon. He adds, that he will share additional content on Patreon, such as behind-the-scenes, exclusive content, 3D files.
It should also be noted that you can find tutorials and courses on the film’s website. For example, you’ll find 3D environment courses, a course focused on creating a marching army, a tutorial on how to model and texture a Greek helmet using Blender and Substance Painter, and even a 10 hour livestream compilation. Some of these courses are free.
