Friendly Fire is a 3D animated short film by Julia Lopes, Alex Valente and Christian Vicenti. It was officially released to the public in 2025, and has been selected for a few film festivals since then.
Friendly Fire is a video game themed adventure/comedy that follows the story of Fogo, a neurotic tutorial NPC desperately trying to convince fun-loving teenager Cody to follow the rules and play his game the conventional way.
This project was their senior thesis at Ringling College of Art and Design and took 1.5 years to create. They are responsible for all aspects of the film.
Our team designed, modeled, retopologized, UV unwrapped, textured, rigged, and animated, each character in "Friendly Fire". Some of the main software we used are Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Nuke, Photoshop, and Premiere.
Below you can see turnarounds of the models I was fully responsible for, as well as their topology. The reel also includes some of my favorite shots I animated.
One of my favorite parts of making "Friendly Fire" was figuring out a way to make this stylized, pixel-inspired game world come to life.
During the 6 months of pre-production, I helped design the characters, create storyboards and animatics, and write the script. Below, you can see some concept sketches for both Cody and Fogo, made in Photoshop.
You can watch the full film by clicking on the link below: