The Green Ruby Pumpkin: An Indie Halloween Film That Rocks

The Green Ruby Pumpkin is a magical and fun short film that captures the enchantment of Halloween. The movie was a passion project created by two senior visual effects artists – Miguel Ortega and Tran Ma. It is inspired by mixed aesthetics such as cgi and 2d animation and features a variety of characters and creatures in a highly stylized world.

I have to admit that I am very, very impressed by the unique style and compelling special effects that Miguel and Tran managed to produce on a very low budget, while shooting in their living room. It is nothing short of incredible what competent people can accomplishe nowadays with a little help from their friends and the creative use of technology.

The Making of The Green Ruby Pumpkin

This is a small selection of some of the assets, and VFX created by Miguel Ortega and Tran Ma for the short film The Green Ruby Pumpkin. The entire project was rendered on 7 computers, Running Maya for 3D, Mudbox for sculpting, Mari and Mudbox for Texture Painting, Vray for rendering, Nuke for compositing. A lot of shortcuts had to be used in order to manage render times including 3d projections in nuke, miniatures, and practical elements. The majority of the vfx work was done by Miguel and Tran, however they did have great help from friends on the rigging and animation side of things. Everything you see on screen was designed and/or fabricated by their team.