Back To The Moon

Isolated on the moon, a lonely and depressed astronaut befriends an exotic alien. Together, they explore the meaning of life, identity, and the resilience of the human spirit. This is the premise of Lightfarm Originals' “Back to the Moon”, a 3D animation designed to take viewers on a misadventure with a complex story arc and a touch of existential philosophy.

The main characters are Tom, a cosmic explorer looking for an adventure to break free from his dull routine, and Ali, an alien entity who knows the universe as well as a gardener knows weeds. Joining their lunar escapades is H3lg4, a vintage AI with the personality of your aunt who just discovered social media. Together, they unravel the moon’s mysterious secrets, along with Matilda, a homesick reptile who sounds like she’s always stuck in a nostalgic karaoke night.

This project is a passion piece we hold dear. We created it out of our love for storytelling and as an experiment to explore the creative freedom that emerging technologies bring to animation, like Unreal Engine, AI, MetaHuman, and motion capture using mocap technology.

In this project, transferring the knowledge of offline render software to Unreal was the initial challenge, but soon the objectives were achieved, and we were able to focus on the art of the project. Back to the Moon has a PBR render aesthetic with cartoon modeling. All the textures were worked on in Substance, where we added details like dust and dirt present in an environment like the Moon. Real-time rendering made it possible to render this film in just a few hours, breaking the barriers of traditional post-production. All the post-production was also done in real-time in Unreal.