The concept of this short animation was born in the idea to tell a story with only planes. As an earlier animated piece and a solo effort, I felt such a piece would work to my strengths as a modeler and composing a shot.
Brainstorming for the storyboarding process helped me decide that a World War II era dogfight would be the most dynamic and straightforward way to tell a story with no expressive characters. While simplistic in nature, my relative inexperience dictated that I keep the scale to a manageable level and tell a self-contained story.
Making the most of few visuals meant accuracy had to be taken into account; blueprints for the featured planes were used in the modeling, as was accuracy in the texturing. Sound design and motion was another area where references to archival footage were key.
In the end, I feel this project portrays a complete vision and remained close to the script to deliver a satisfying product. I was able to experiment with Maya for the majority of the project, while crossing over into other programs, such as Adobe AfterEffects for compositing.