Bruja is a short live-action science-fiction film extensively using green-screen and digital sets. It is being made during the 2011/12 academic year at the University for the Creative Arts campus at Rochester, UK.
Craig Robinson, one of the directors of GlyphCG, has been involved in digital art, in some form or another since a child. Like his software development career however, he never looked at gaining qualifications in his field. Starting in 2004 however, and after being in both industries for nearly 30 years, Craig decided to change all of that. Over the next few years, Craig gained a BSc honours degree in computing, became a Chartered IT Professional and while still running his software development company also started to teach on under-graduate IT courses at Mid-Kent College in Kent, UK.
In 2010, Craig decided to switch his principle learning to his arts skills and enrolled on an MA in Digital Design with the University for the Creative Arts. As part of his final year, he researched various aspects of computing and in particular Augmented and Virtual Reality. Having various more conventional and contemporary ideas, he sought out a more challenging and CG oriented carriage for demonstrating his research work in a final project.
The results are the Bruja short-film.
The Bruja short film is intended to represent the first minutes of a larger entity and therefore does not even attempt to relate an entire story within its boundaries - it does not even attempt to be a trailer for the larger film. Instead, Bruja introduces the principle character, her environment, situation and gives a hint that she is running into unexpected danger.
Along the way however, we encounter various everyday uses of augmented and virtual reality devices, techniques and environments. These elements are the focus of the MA research work, but are deliberately revealed to the viewer as normal parts of the environment, rather than forcibly and in a product placement style of filmmaking.
Read More: What's Bruja about?
The main character of the film is Bruja, or 'Witch'- the operating flight-handle of a middle-aged ex-military female pilot. She has some issues caused by past events during combat but now works for the civilian administration as the captain of large interstellar vessels.
Her reputation however, is without question - and it is this level of proven ability which is the main cause of her selection to pilot a large cruiser at short notice.