Through the Dark is a 4½ minute 3D-animated interactive film for Google that’s viewed in a web browser and rendered in real-time, allowing the user to experience the story by changing the camera’s perspective and moving between two worlds.
The project was a collaboration with Hilltop Hoods and features their song of the same name. The track was written by one of the band members, Daniel Smith, when his eight-year-old son Liam was diagnosed with leukaemia and spent six-months in hospital. Based on this experience, the film tells a poignant story of a boy and his father struggling with their fears of losing one another.
The film is told in fourteen scenes, each of which was modelled and animated in Maya, then converted to a format that allowed it to be rendered in real-time in the browser with standard web technologies such as WebGL and the Web Audio API.
Through the Dark was the most successful digital interactive project of the year, receiving over fifty accolades at major international award shows and festivals.
