So you’re a Stargate fan with 3D animation and design skills and some time to kill. What do you do over the holiday break?

For Sydney, Australia-based Mike Williamson, he created this amazing and modern new opening credits sequnce for the original Stargate film. The 1-minute opening credit sequence draws on imagery from ancient Egypt and the 1994 movie, which was directed by Roland Emmerich.

The sequence was created in just 10 days and released by MISTER, Mike’s motion design and 3D company based in Sydney. Check it out here:

“I’ve always wanted to create opening titles for a big show and have been thinking for a while about doing a fan one,” Williamson told GateWorld. “I just didn’t know what film. Also last year I fell in love with the track I used and was thinking it would be great to use on a project.”

He said that with work shut down for the Christmas break, he set himself a 10-day challenge — and the trailer was the final result.

“I had originally planned just to do a series of 3D lighting tests using Roman and Greek statues,” he said. “While looking online at statues I stumbled across an Egyptian statue and a bell rang in my head … STARGATE!”

The numerous 3D animated shots in the Stargate trailer came about through a guerilla process of trying out lots of things and seeing what worked.

“I went in with no real plan except to make cool shots,” Williamson said. “If a shot didn’t work then I’d just move on to the next one. It was a much freer way to work and I found I got some great results, very quickly. I also streamlined my workflow which allowed me to do a lot of finessing in the comp stage.

“From 3D I would render each light separately, so that after it was rendered I could still play with the lighting in the comp stage. This sped things up considerably.”

The video features a score by Lorne Balfes (originally done for the soundtrack to His Dark Materials).

“The music is a track I fell in love with earlier last year,” Williamson said. “I shared the work with Lorne on facebook when it was completed and was lucky enough to get a response from him saying he loved it — so that was a great feeling.”

“I’m really happy with how it turned out and have been very grateful for the attention it has received. I was worried at the start that my animation skills were fairly basic and that it would show in the end product — but I think I hid that fairly well in the end!”

Read more about the project at Behance. Our thanks to Mike and the team at MISTER for sharing his work!

On Twitter: @studiomistersyd