The Attic - Escape Room

The Attic is a escape room by TeamTrapped.

Before entering the room a short video is shown which tells the story of the room and what the players need to achieve for them to escape the room.

__________________________________________________________

- The story -

"Joseph, better known as ‘Ancum the Great’ is going to amaze the world again. Secluded in his attic studio, the illusionist secretly works on his latest and greatest trick ever. Nobody knows what to expect and even his lovely assistant is completely kept in the dark. One thing is certain! This trick will assure them all of a comfortable future, or means the final downfall of ‘Ancum the Great’ and all of his loved ones."

__________________________________________________________

Big inspiration came from the movie 'The Prestige'.

The idea for the introduction film was to create a series of sketches and a camera that pans through the layers like a viewing box.

Moodboard

_____________________________________________________________________________

Storyboard

_________________________________________________

When agreed on the storyboard the full drawn out versions are made with layers in mind so that we could animate the scene in Adobe After Effects..

To set up the scenes wasn't difficult. It was mostly the matter what camera movements are going to be. The first scenes starts with a slow and steady movement, when the story comes to a point were it talks about the dangerous part of the story the movement of the camera gets more dynamic.

For the first scene the background is scaled up really large and pushed far in the Z space so that I would be almost static when the camera moves from right to left. The middle layer had a normal size and the front layer was rather small, because it appeared just in front of the camera.

Final render first scene

____________________________________________________________________

An other example at a more extensive scene is the scene with the most effects. In this scene the magician is testing out the device for his newest trick while Gust is lurking from behind some chairs and sees how dangerous it has become.

For this scene both front layer and background are drawn 2 times: One normal scene and one variant with a blue lighting. The layer that was blue lit was placed over the normal layers and with help from a simple expression the opacity flickered between 0% and 100% along the brightness of the lightning that was generated over the scene. To make it all more real stock footage of particles were edited at the scene and a final smoke charge for the bang. A cartoonist effect was added to the smoke layer so that it blends better with the style of the drawing.

________________________________________________________

In the final shot of the film contains a drawing of the chest the players must find in the room. Instead of a static image we wanted to give it depth so the flow of the film isn't suddenly interrupted. So a displacement map had to be created with masks, layers and the gradient tool to create a fake depth that looks convincing with minimal camera movement.

Flat 2D image