The Mega Man X series is long overdue for a fresh animated adaptation. Until then, artist Nikodem Bredlich is here to remind us how perfectly suited the esteemed series is for film or TV.
Created by Bredlich, "Mega Man X: Mavericks" is a series of shorts that strives to answer a fun question: What if all eight Mavericks from X1 survived?
Bredlich published two episodes so far: Launch Octopus and Storm Eagle. He hopes to create 2-3 minute shorts for each Maverick. The final two episodes will reportedly bring all eight together. A final, 8-against-1 showdown with X, maybe? Oooh!
Needless to say, it's an interesting concept. I'm genuinely excited to see how it'll all play out. The Storm Eagle episode took four months to render alone, so don't expect to see additional entries so soon. "Mavericks" is a marathon, not a race.
Hit up Bredlich's YouTube channel for future episodes, behind-the-scenes clips and more!
very curious... but wrong. the death rogumer crashed into the electromagnetic power plant if you defeat storm eagle, making it impossible for storm eagle to suddenly end up in the new-type airport again, unless he ended up on a fallen piece of the death rogumer that conveniently ended up at the new-type airport while the rest crashed in the electromagnetic power plant.
ReplyDeletevery good animation, though. i like the redesign given to the character.
Neat but I would love to see him explode like in the game and destroyed. He wasn't destroyed but left in injury. That's creative but not like in game, thought.
ReplyDeleteI already like this more than whatever Hollywood is doing. They need to take notes. Treat your source material with RESPECT.
ReplyDeleteIt's not rocket science...
hollywood does things that are nothing like source material because they bring money. if you don't like it, don't pay for whatever hollywood makes.
DeleteI don't. Beat you to it, figured that out years ago.
DeleteIt is false that they "bring money". There are more bombs than successes. The successes were closer to respect than straight up garbage each and every time.
There are other reasons they do it and I am not going to waste any more energy here on those.
The failures ignored, messed up or flat out disrespected the lore.
After all, "there's a reason why lore is important"... right?
hmm... i didn't know that they were bombs. last time i heard about hollywood's... works, they were said to bring quite a bit of money, and you did get me there in the last sentence, so i concede.
DeleteFiguring out whether or not something made money (and why) can be tricky. The Force Awakens made 2 billion dollars despite being an average-to-terrible Star Wars film, but you have to remember that it had been 10 years since the last film of one of the most recognizable (and controversial) film franchises. Captain Marvel also made money, despite that character not being a big comics seller, but there are two indicators as to how or why: it was released in between Infinity War and Endgame, and many people on Twitter and YouTube noticed seats being bought up at theatres, but those seats remained empty. This implies that Marvel/Disney had indirectly been buying tickets to their own movies to puff up the opening week's box office numbers, something not unheard of in Hollywood. They did everything they could to ensure it would be successful because they didn't have much faith in it.
DeleteIn short, just because it made money doesn't say much about it's quality or how much it respects the lore. Timing plays a big factor, and sometimes Hollywood will simply try to cheat.
@Mike,
DeleteOne thing that can be said about Star Wars is they lost steam. If they were truly successful, the opposite would have occurred. They may have earned a profit, but Disney is still hurting from the bad choices they made on that one. Same with the MCU. It is in the process of losing steam, time will tell but that's what I see happening.
When it comes down to it, if someone wants to adapt something they should strive to maintain as much of the source as is feasible, like in Lord of the Rings, which continues to make a shit ton of money.
OR
You they can take tones of artistic license, making things way off from their source material, changing things for "reasons" in this day and age, pissing off the core demographic and releasing a flop, or at the VERY least a film that will do far worse than what it could have. That's what I am 99% positive the Mega Man film will be. BUT we shall see.
This short, though not true to the story, is harmless, non-canon and has a lot of love in it. The character design is both real world and based on the original design, not a Bayformer monster. So I give it 👍👍
Truth!
DeleteGeez, who cares if these don't exactly make sense in the lore, these animations are the best that's happened to the X franchise since.............. forever. Look incredibly amazing and super promising as an awesome-looking what-if type short. Super looking forward to seeing more of these. I was wondering what took so long for these shorts to show up here lol. Saw them a while ago and was blown away.
ReplyDeletemight i remind you that X1 was conceptualized as a more-story focused game than any of it's predecessors?
Deletethere's a reason why lore is important - as impressive the animation work is, a short film is meant to tell something, no? a story, usually. if that story doesn't make sense, what's it for, then?
I understand. The lore is important, but depending on the lore itself and the artist's vision, sometimes you can get a better product by taking artistic liberty. Maybe he thought the short would be more effective to show Storm Eagle at the airport instead of at the plant, or he just wanted to see him there. I think it worked, since now I want to see an entire 20-40 minute film like this.
DeleteThat's not to say it couldn't have looked as good or better had he clawed his way out of a wrecked Rogumer at the plant. If it were me, I would have done it like that, but then again I'm not a 3D artist, and I never thought about the X1 Mavericks surviving. I'm satisfied enough with what I got, but I think the criticism still stands.
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Delete@Mike
Deletethat is true, if we're taking it from an artistic vision standpoint, it makes a lot of sense.
@Tiny Proto
now this is where I can't exactly follow the path of this statement. let's think...
lore-based series gets complaints because lore doesn't make sense in some later entries. those complaints are because lore is important to the series and people are unhappy with it not making sense in later entries. shouldn't this mean that people would want the fanwork about the same series to also make sense?
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Delete@Tiny Proto
Deletei don't really see how this is comparable to a joke? it's very well done for one and i am not seeing any punchlines. it seems to be rather in-tone with the original game otherwise, and the original game never contradicted itself in terms of locations.
fair point at the end, though.
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DeleteOh okay I'm a dummy. I made assumptions about what you thought fanworks should be like and that's why I was getting overly combative.
DeleteMy apologies.
Imagine this becoming part of a semi-live action Mega Man X movie…
ReplyDeleteI can imagine it. I like what I see.
DeleteThese look really wonderful!
ReplyDeleteIt looks well done but it gives me Transformers vibes for some reason. Not really to my taste, personally.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking it reminded me of the Bumblebee film, not the awful, what-am-i-looking-at? Michael Bay films.
DeleteHey guys. I'm Niko, the creator of the mavericks series ��✌️
ReplyDeleteI just found out about this article and I want to thank protodude for this!!!
I never thought that something I made, would end up being discussed on other sites! ��
And thank you all for the comments and interesting takes and ideas! It's still crazy to me, that this went so far. Especially since it was just a fun side project to learn the 3d software ��
I'm very greatfull for you guys and that the support gives me the drive to continue to work on the series!
@sprite recreator: You're right, canonically it's wrong what happened with death rogumer.
My thought process was basically that this is a alternate reality scenario. The mavericks didn't survive like in the series either. So with this, I thought, the location could also be changed. But I think the main point is, that not all people are familiar with the original lore. Most people know eagle and the airport stage. So I thought this would be more fun, to see both again as it was in the game with all those familiar elements. To set this in the power plant might have been more confusing for most.
Plus, I have other plans for the power plant and mandrill ��
In the end, ist nothing official. Just my fan fic and a what if. Like an alternate reality. So I took some liberties with the lore. If you don't like it then that's fine. It still doesn't change the original.
If you have any wishes, ideas or "please don't do that"s then pleas contact me through my social accounts or write here. I'm very curious, what other fans like, want and cherish about mega man.
Thanks again for everything!
See you again with episode 3 ��
Internal monologue/dubbing?
DeleteWhat program did you make your 3D model of Storm Eagle?
You do the whole thing in Blender? Wow.
that makes sense! thank you for clearing that up. have a good day!
DeleteYes, almost everything was made in Blender. Smoke simulations were made in Embergen and some small post effects in After Effects.
DeleteI was hesitant about using voices.
I wanted to convey the story mostly through action and small hints, rather than telling the viewer what is going on. It leaves more room for interpretation and more mystery.
Plus the mavericks seem more menacing when they don't say anything. Then you know, sh**t's about to go down :D
Plus I don't know how to write dialogue:D
But thanks for the feedback. I will keep that in mind!
@Nikodem I like to toy around with 3D stuff, bit I haven't learned Blender yet. Everything I ever did was in Sketchup or Sculptris. I tried Blender, but lost patience with it so didn't get far. Of all the Mavericks, I would think Chill Penguin would be the easiest, cause he's pretty basic, so I tried to make a model of him. I also took as stab at Bubble Crab once. But nothing ever finished and nothing that looked as good as yours.
DeleteThat already sounds ver cool :)
DeleteI know, 3d can be pretty intimidating at first. But after a while you'll get first small results and then the motivation kicks in ;) You just need to stick with it.
Try some YouTube tutorials and follow them. There are lots of great beginner ones. And learn the shortcuts!!! :D
Then, when you're comfortable with basic modeling, you can try modeling penguin. You're right, he should be pretty easy as he is made out of simple shapes.
But don't be demotivated because someone did something much more elaborate and you don't get that in your first tries.
It took me a long time and many fails. And I'm still learning. There are a lot of things that I still can't do.
Hope you get there! It's super fun :)
If you have any questions regarding blender, you can hit me up on my social channels :)
That's cool. Thanks for the advice.
DeleteI'm kinda inspired now... maybe I will take another stab at it this weekend.
Maybe I can use Blender to make some weapons as a demo. I already have a model of the Z Saber but I could do it again just to learn. That's simple shapes.
What I have done in the past (and is visible in my avatar) is I used Sketchup to make the 3D models of X and co to make figure model kits. I used Scultpris for things like the face and hair which is really tough.
Sketchup is good for environments, buildings and so on. It doesn't do curves or meshes by default, so my models look "pixelated" in places in real life.
Yeah, just start with simple things. I think the z sabre would be a good start. Just to get you comfortable with modeling. That's the basis for everything after that ��
ReplyDeleteAwesome that you already have experience with SketchUp! Then you probably won't have to learn how to navigate and work in a 3d environment. That already gives you a big advantage. So the first step is already taken ��
Check out those two beginner tutorials. These helped me a lot with the basics:
https://youtu.be/TPrnSACiTJ4
https://youtu.be/7MRonzqYJgw
I'm sure, when you get the first nice results, you won't stop there ��
Good luck! ��
Eee! He looks awesome!!!! X3
ReplyDelete