Selected by Epic Games to create a short film in four weeks based on the concept of ‘Duality,’ Arturo Brena and his production studio, KeexFrame, used Unreal Engine to tell the emotional story of a thief who confronts a young, wounded version of themselves when looking in a mirror.
Even though Epic Games’ Unreal Engine has been around since the late 90s, it was in 2014 that the software really made a name for itself in story development. That year, Unreal Engine 4 was released to schools and universities for free, along with an Unreal Engine Marketplace for gaming and film assets. In 2015, Epic released Unreal for free to all users; that same year Epic launched Unreal Dev Grants, a $5 million development fund to provide grants for creative projects using Unreal Engine 4.
Thus began a new wave of creativity, where anyone could not only try their hand at 3D animated storytelling via the software, but Epic would provide the assets and potentially some finances to do so.
Fast forward to the launch of Unreal 5 in 2022 along with the introduction of Unreal Fellowship, a 30-day intensive learning experience designed to help experienced industry professionals in film, animation, and VFX learn Unreal Engine. KeexFrame – which has done 3D animation promos for the FIFA World Cup opener on Telemundo and the 150th British Open on NBC – was four years old by that time and looking for their next project.
“I was nominated by Epic Games to be part of a selected group of artists from around the world, each of us, to create a short film in four weeks with the concept of ‘duality,’” explains KeexFrame founder Arturo Brena. “I’d used Unreal Engine for some other projects in the realm of augmented reality, but I’d never used it for lineal storytelling before. It was new to use a gaming engine for something not interactive.”
Brena’s short film, The Thief, is roughly three minutes long and stars an androgynous, well-scarred thief who comes upon a mirror in the woods after making a run for their life. The thief looks into the mirror and sees a younger version of themselves, crying due to a fresh wound on their cheek. It’s a wound that has long since healed on the adult thief…
The film, along with the studio’s other Unreal-animated short, Escaping the Dark Room, can be viewed on KeexFrame’s website: https://keexframe.com/project/thethief
“My main message is to raise awareness that it’s never too late to heal your old wounds,” explains Brena. “Our personalities are significantly shaped by our ability to assimilate and/or heal from our early wounds. We tend to believe that we are too old to heal or too old to confront those wounds, but the lightness and satisfaction after finally confronting them is a pleasure that makes it worthwhile, even in the eve of your last few breaths. The idea is that this wound [on the thief] can represent anything, and that character could represent anyone. That is the main reason behind the slightly androgynous aspect of the main character.”
A few years ago, Brena discovered the power of healing through therapy and explains that his short is influenced by that process. “I was not working on a specific ‘wound’ when I created this short film,” he notes. “But the process of therapy helped me a lot and I wanted to raise awareness about the overall process of self-observation as a tool for healing wounds of the past.”
He continues, “One thing that I have become convinced of as my life progresses is that, regardless of your efforts of hiding, ignoring, or shielding from it, your ‘mirror’ will eventually make its way to you. Sooner or later, you will have to confront yourself, with all your wounds and fears.”
It’s an emotional three minutes that leans into the power of close-up face shots, which had to be sufficiently detailed to push a narrative Brena didn’t have enough time to otherwise reveal with the story.
“The facial animation was the most challenging part,” says Brena. “I wanted to truly achieve a level of expression that would allow the audience to connect with the character in less than two minutes. I spent many hours fine-tuning the faces.”
The creation of the characters is all done using a toolset from Unreal called the MetaHuman Creator, which is used to create realistic humans. From the untamed scalp bristles and wrinkles on parched lips to red-vein-streaked whites of eyes and freckles from too much time in the sun, the thief in Brena’s films falls just short of a live-action rendition. And it was all done in record time.
“I don’t think I would’ve been able to achieve that level of realism in such a short amount of time with any other tool,” says Brena. “The learning curve was steep at the beginning, but we had amazing support from Epic and the Unreal community. The comparison with other traditional tools is abysmal. The idea of creating a three-minute short film in a traditional pipeline is a process of several months, and in this new pipeline is a process of only four weeks, including creating the script. Even though Unreal Engine was the logical choice for this short film since it was for Epic Games, I found it to be one of the most impressive and well-rounded tools for storytelling.”
Brena also shares that the ability to visualize the film in real-time with Unreal opens new doors for storytelling exploration that are not possible in traditional animation pipelines. “You can literally test multiple versions of the shot in minutes and see the final result in your edit immediately. This technology allows you to concentrate on the storytelling instead of the technicalities of how to accomplish what you want to achieve.”
No longer constrained so heavily by time or money, Brena hopes to demonstrate that, with current graphic technology, the true limitation is the creator’s ability to tell a story.
“To animation artists, I hope The Thief helps bridge that gap between overthinking and just doing it,” he says. “All this was created only in a few weeks, and all the tools are there at your disposal for free. Anyone can do this.”
Brena also shares that he been working on ways to expand the world of The Thief and its leading character. “I don’t want to say much about it since it is still in the creative process, but yes… there is something cooking,” he says. “I want this character to be a mirror that makes audiences question if there is something in their past that needs some attention, if there is a wound to heal, and to hopefully contribute to the courage of doing so.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
