4 WAYS BLOG
4 Ways to Destroy South Aspen high is an indie film I had the pleasure of working on as an environment artist and this blog documents the process all the way from concept to completetion
POST - PRODUCTION
The work below is all done after our shoot, and will be on the path to final pixels
I have also been working with my effects artist to get the layout for the aftermath shot. Currently we have a framing for where the destruction is going to take place and I need to work on just slapping down a bunch of junk inside the rooms to sell the shot the best we can. Overall a lot of progress has been made on the shot in the texture department with some test renders coming shortly to show that off.
Have been mainly working on pushing out textures for all the assets in the scene. Just finished up the Text above the door for the name, which was one of the last objects I had left. We are beginning the process of putting all of it together and rendering out some test lighting and images to keep pushing the exterior shot forward.
Low quality render of the most recent version of the exterior of Arnold Hall. I have added in the bushes and have done the exterior lamps in a separate file due to slow load times in the current file from all the leaves as I opted for real geo
Low quality render of the exterior of Arnold Hall. I am still going back and forth between using cards or actual geometry for the bushes infront of the building.
Low quality render of the exterior of Arnold Hall. Blocked out the location of both the cars that we will see due to other shots, and the location of the foliage in the scene. Also added a little nod to some of the social media posts we did to promote the film.
These 4 images are some quick progress I made in blocking out and starting to add the detail of the scene.
PRE - PRODUCTION
The following work was done in preparation of our shoot dates of January 15th-January 19th 2026
The following our initial ideas for the exterior of the school playing around with some concepts that are very similar to Arnold Hall but have more going on
Now that our shooting location is locked at Arnold Hall, these are some quick block outs of some of the hallways inside of Arnold Hall
These viewport renders are tests for potential look of a couple shots in the film. Above is a roughed out hallway scene so my team's effects artist can begin testing explosions on. Right is a rough blocking for the initial detention sequence in the gym.
With plans for CG lockers to be added into the film later on, I roughed out some temporary versions for test renders and feel while we waited for the actual lockers that we would have on set to be acquired.
CONCEPT
The basics of the concept is a superhero short film following the journey of 4 high-school students that recently have discovered they have superpowers. While they have a general idea of how their powers work, they are still learning how to fully control them. We meet our main characters in after school detention where they have to escape from an evil group trying to capture them to turn them into weapons. My role in the film will be to do the environment work for the project.