Mission to Minerva

"Be careful what you mine for."

The Challenge

In 2022, the OGs from Kitbash3D created a challenge where they supplied artists with a whole asset pack and named it “Mission to Minerva.” The idea was that Minerva is the name of a galaxy, and the goal was to explore it — either through stills, concept art, or short movies. Awesome!

The Goal

The best mix of circumstances: a theme, a pack, some prizes to dangle in front of the ego, and most importantly — a deadline! For this one, my goals were mostly about storytelling and environment design. It’s always a great opportunity to acquire better skills.

I didn’t have much time to go really deep, though — I had a day job at a studio at the time and two small kids at home. So, this project would be evenings/nights/weekend fun with limited time. But the big driving force was definitely the topic of space sci-fi!

Let’s get better at:

UE in general
Storytelling and cinematography
Environment design

The Story

The name Minerva was an interesting choice… When you Google it, you find out that in Roman mythology, Minerva is the goddess of wisdom (Athena is the Greek version). She was the one who punished the beautiful priestess of her temple and turned her into Medusa! Oh shit… Medusa ... hmmm, monsters, space… stone… space, asteroids… asteroid mining… Yes, a mining facility on an asteroid.

But how do you connect it with the myth? Medusa turned everything to stone when anyone “looked” at her. What if the asteroid is actually a giant head — a statue floating in space? A head of a statue of Athena/Minerva! Fuck yes — that’s a cool visual and also a solid story point to build on.

The facility is abandoned — radio silent. They found something inside the asteroid/head… a monster. Medusa. Space alien shit. Millennia old, in another galaxy. Myths repeating.

What if the asteroids themselves aren’t just asteroids? What if the Medusa creature can turn everything into stone — not just living things?

We need a hero. I don’t have time to create characters, so let’s just use the ship from the pack. It’ll be a search party vehicle exploring the abandoned site. It finds the creature and gets turned to stone — or better, it gets added to the collection of asteroids. Shit, that might work!

One last cherry on top: How do you convey that this is like an eternal, repeating thing? Maybe this is THE Medusa from the myth? Floating through the cosmos for eons, even reaching another galaxy (which is a huge stretch, but why not?). Or maybe the monster was imprisoned inside the giant statue, and greed — mining for resources — set her free.

Now she’s turning everything to stone again and again, for who knows how long. Let’s loop the whole video. Yup, got it! :)

For this one, I loved the process of figuring out the story and how it influenced the cinematography and environment design. I know I don’t really have the skills to convey it fully, but that’s fine. Let’s go for it!

So, the tagline would be somehing like this:

"No riches. Only a curse set in stone."

The Environment

I knew I had to create a giant statue head, the size of an asteroid, with a facility buried in its side. A big space scene, which naturally led me to the one and only John Harris. I’m a huge fan of his work, and for a long time, I wanted to recreate one of his images as a 3D scene in Unreal Engine and use it to learn tools for creating environments.

I have his book MASS - The Art of John Harris, which has a huge collection of space/asteroid scenes. This project became a fan homage to John Harris. Other inspirations were naturally Aliens, Dead Space, and a mix of my favorite artists.

The asteroid field was from the Unreal Marketplace, with awesome blueprints to easily scatter clumps of asteroids in the scene. I tweaked the materials a bit and heavily used volumetric fog and the space skybox that came with the pack.

For the Athena/Minerva head, I found a beautiful model on TurboSquid. I wanted to stay in Unreal Engine as much as possible, so I used its modeling tools, which luckily (fresh in that version, I think) had a Boolean operation. I used it to carve out pieces from the Athena head and “sculpt” the asteroid that way. I first learned about this technique from the BTS video from the Quixel environment video series called "Ninety Days in Unreal Engine 5".

I really enjoyed placing all the individual pieces together, especially the little tower with a road running along the statue’s face into its eye. :)

The facility inside the asteroid was completely made from the pack assets provided. Basically, the entire environment was a kitbashing exercise. And for the same reasons (lack of skills and time), the Medusa creature design followed a similar process.

The Creature

Buried on the other side of the asteroid is the Medusa creature. I knew I had to show very little of it, using only exaggerated lighting. But it was boring when I started the previz and played with the edit. Luckily, by that time, I already had the music, which started dictating what I needed to add.

I figured it might be cool to create a more abstract scene, leaning into the “myth” of Medusa and the eternal curse. Let’s just do a face. Make it striking. Make it symbolic.

I found a great, messed-up creatures on the Unreal Marketplace. I frankensteined an Insectoid with a Demon and a human skull with tentacles coming out of its head. I added multiple sets of eyes and blended them with a human skull. See, mom? I’m kitbashing, no modeling!

I also wanted symbolism. When you Google “Medusa symbol,” you find some cool designs. I placed them directly into the Unreal Engine scene with the creature, then rendered them separately on black to comp them in After Effects later.

The Cinematography

No handheld this time — loooong, slow shots to build tension. Then at the end, chaos!

Technically, the first shot was challenging, because it also had to be the last shot as well, because of the loop. I wanted to render it all in one, so that probably took me the most time. The other hard one was the reveal of the creature on the other side of the asteroid. I finally figured out that the solution is to first cut off the power and go dark. That’s the beat, that’s the moment shit goes bad. Without it, the edit didn’t work.

Shot development.

The Music

Again, my go to for these dark pieces. Kings & Creatures. Usually, when I find te right track, so many other things fall into place - visually, pacing-wise, and in the edit - I love using their music. Its basically 80% of the vibe. Licensed through Position music. The song is called Under the Surface - I mean, hello? … :)

I used their music also in Machine Junkies and Insomniacs.

The Conclusion

The winners of the challenge were well-deserved as usual. The judges are industry professionals, the artists get exposure and sweet prizes, and Kitbash3D does very clever marketing. We as artists get to level our skills up, everybody is happy. Especially the winner in the motion section was out of this world…so much work its crazy. Congrats!

For me, I’m quite happy with the result. As usual, I’d love to improve the storytelling and make the themes clearer for the viewer — but hey, someday! :)

Thanks for checking out the project!