This was a plum assignment, in which visual effects artists Max Ivins, Tomas Rosenfelt and I got to design the opening sequence of the film -- quite an honor for my first feature film project! Director Michael Bay was basically generous with what we could do. His only criteria was, when the asteroid hit the earth, the impact should be * BIG *...catastrophically * BIG *.

Treating the earth like a little jewel, I used rich and saturated colors to illustrate a fresh and unpolluted ecosystem. I illuminated the undersea architecture at the moment of impact to give it a gorgeous aquatic brilliance. I also employed complex specular maps to give the surface detailed highlights and scale.

The resulting sequence is what you see.