Oblivion Interactive Displays

Animation, Producer & Director

This was a fan project I made with friends in 2016, posted for educational purposes only. We spent a few months recreating the interface screens from Oblivion, using film stills, reference grabs, and fan forums to reverse-engineer how the system worked.

Zac and Jay rebuilt the artwork in vector form, and I animated the screens piece by piece, starting with the globes and working outward from there. A lot of the work was just patience, matching the film as closely as we could, keeping long 4K renders manageable, and making sure every panel felt like it belonged in that world.

We rebuilt all four interface panels from scratch as a fan tribute made for education and study.
I animated each screen element by element, focusing on accuracy, timing, and how the system would behave in the film's world.
We used pre-renders and a tightly organized workflow to handle long 4K comps without losing our minds.

Screen 1

What made this project fun was that we were not just tracing screens. We were trying to extend the logic of the film and build scenarios that felt like they could have happened alongside what was already on screen.

For Screen 1, I animated the sequence where Tom Cruise repairs drone 166 in real time, lining it up with the events of the movie as closely as I could.

Screen 2

Screen 1

John built the 3D drones for this part of the project, which gave me a strong base to work from. I animated the surrounding interface elements so the screen could reflect things like repairs in progress or drones going missing.

This panel also acted like a remote control layer for the other screens, so it had more responsibility than just showing data. It tracked TECH 49 throughout the film and included moments like leaving the pod, moving across the landscape, and the search for drone 172.

It was also the hardest screen to render because of the constant motion in the red bars. All of the flying drone movement had to stay synchronized with the film, which made the timing side pretty unforgiving.

Screen 2

A lot of the fun on this project came from building expressions in After Effects. I wrote setups for things like the platform rotation and the audio waveform animation, which helped the screen feel more alive without keyframing every small detail.

Screen 3 was especially tricky because of the rotating drones around the Hydrarigs. The dots on that screen were tied back to drone positions on Screen 2, and the drones had to auto-orient toward the camera, so there was a lot of interdependence between the panels.

Screen 3

Screen 2

We also recreated the Hydrarig explosion moment, when the characters are jolted awake by the blast. Since the film does not spell out every system response, we had to make some judgment calls about what the interface would probably do next.

We assumed a shutdown sequence would follow, then animated the screens around that logic. That section also includes Tom Cruise heading out to assess the damage.

Screen 3

Screen 2

Screen 4

The last screen was the tall vertical one, used for things like wind speed, velocity, and communication signals with Skytower 49. It had a design that almost felt like a clock, which gave it a different rhythm from the other panels.

Like the rest of the project, it was built through a lot of collaboration and a lot of obsessive fan energy. The whole thing was really a tribute, made by people who loved the film and wanted to understand how its UI might actually work.