Someone is making a Metal Gear animated short, and it looks awesome

May 14, 2017 Nyxus

An aspiring animator by the name of Mitchell Hammond is currently working on an animated short based on the original Metal Gear on MSX. A few days ago he posted a work in progress video showing (there’s no sound yet). [Update: video removed, but there are some other ones at the bottom of the article.]

Hammond started the project in December of 2014 but can only work on it in his spare time. The style and attention to detail are awesome though.

Here are some screenshots that show the creation of one of the animation’s backgrounds.

And here’s another shot in the making, of Solid Snake himself.

And here are some more images with comments by Mitchell himself.

*“Panorama for the opening shot, as you can see the center of the fortress is drawn with a curve to help the illusion of the camera tilting up to emphasize scale.”*

“Panorama for the first main area of Outer Heaven’s first floor. In the game this is one wide, long hall. I wanted a single long shot to get across the size and spatial awareness of the facility as well as a sort of introduction to the atmosphere and detail of the animation.”

“Our first glimpse of Big Boss’ lair. Here’s the transceiver from the original game and next to it is a satellite relay device. Next to it is a General PCT-50 MSX monitor with a Snatcher cartridge in the MSX2 keyboard slot. This will have more importance by the end of the video.”

*“Early sketch of Big Boss. As you can see, he no longer has his horn, but there is a little bit of a bump under the stitching. More on that in the future.”*

For reference, here’s a screen of the original game from 1987 on MSX. You can see that the animation is hitting the right notes in terms of color palette and overall feel.

When finished, the full thing is planned to be somewhere under 4 minutes long. If you want to support the project be sure to check out the Patreon page.

Work-in-progress updates:

August 2022:

January 2023:

April 2024:

Source: Blogspot, Patreon

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