eightvfx creates a poppy, colourful world for Fuser

In anticipation of one of the hottest video games coming to game consoles in Fall 2020, Los Angeles based visual effects studio eightvfx has provided VFX for gaming company Harmonix Music System’s official announcement of Fuser, directed by Ben Mor for Pulse Films.

No longer top secret, Fuser game just made its debut at Pax East in Boston. Fuser will allow players to become a DJ, mix music, and create audio tracks and playlists from some of the world’s hottest artists. The highly anticipated game will arrive this Fall on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PCs. 

Created by Liquid Advertising and produced by Pulse Films, Fuser’s announcement promo takes us through an exuberant, melodic, and colorful world where the heroine’s musical imagination is the limit. As she makes way through her day, the city is alive and teeming with life. The energy and noise inspires her to create a unique soundtrack for her otherwise mundane daily commute. Each sonic layer the city offers triggers an analogous sound in a familiar song and leads to a contagious, lyrical mash-up featuring Billie Eillish’s Bad Guy, Blue Oyster Cult’s The Reaper, and transitioning to Post Malone's Better Now.  Noise and music all blend together seamlessly, ultimately leading our heroine to become the star DJ at a massive event to an ignited crowd.

Among eightvfx’s most challenging tasks on the hush-hush project, was setting the look for what was desired to be achieved while making sure they had sound methodology and the pipeline to achieve a stylized and surreal journey through a modern cityscape lead by a magnetic, creative heroine. 

“We made sure to do our R+D, as well as craft some looks to determine all the details. Time was also a challenge with the amount of work we had to do internally within a short two week timeframe,”  says eightvfx’s VFX Supervisor Aryel Melek-Shalom VFX. “Director Ben Mor from Pulse Films was super involved in our VFX process, so as a team, we were able to bring his bold and bright vision to picture.”

“Every shot in the Fuser trailer required 3D tracking and matching movement of the ad’s hero character for the particle generation scenes as well as the headphone replacement. Each shot also came with a lot of setup time before we were able to move over to compositing. To complete the project, we utilized a combination of Nuke, After Effects, Houdini for logo animation, and Flame for finish, to accomplish the magical particles and brightly hued world our leading lady was making her symphonic journey through," shares Melek-Shalom.