Production Arts for Screen BA (Hons)
First stage: research and collecting ideas
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The eye-ball soup project was introduced as an homage to one of the Indiana Jones' movie scene. This has immediately directed my vision towards other media-franchises that have graphic scenes and/or explore the theme of human violence and brutality - like "The Mummy" and "The Scorpion King". Something that attracted me in those franchises was its dark phantasy medieval visuals, which especially reflected in the character of the environment. My main intention was to make an environment that seems old and used, and is set in the dining area of the Bronze Age. However, the further I got in my research, I understood that the time period I would like to see in my project would be more modern, yet with classy old elements.
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One of the websites that helped me to guide my vision was Filmgrab.com, which is an archive of movie frames from different projects of all genres. Through analysis of color choices and compositions, I found movies which visual language I preferred more, compared to my previous inspirations, like "The Godfather", "The Irishman", "Knives out", "Scarface". I got also very inspired from "Hannibal" series and the "gourmet" approach to food, which led me to alter my choice for time and place setting for my project: I resonated a lot more with "America dream", New York, Mafia aesthetics.
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Movie frames inspiration
"The Irishman"
"Knives out"
"Scarface"
"The Irishman"
When I decided on the time and place setting of my scene, I decided to move on to the detailed research of visual references of interiors in classic, traditional, and mid-century modern styles, which had elements that I wanted to bring to my final design. I also started doing a mood-board of different props in the set environment like glass- and dinnerware, cutlery and furniture. My main visual inspirations were wooden and metal furniture with leather elements, full-wall shelf units, chrome metallic details.​ After collecting enough references, I moved on to concept and composition making.
Mood-boards
Second stage: 3D-making
Stage of 3D making began for me with blocking out the scene. It was important to keep the dimensions and proportions right from the start, so my starting point was a cube 4 by 5 meters. Inside the cube, I blocked out main objects like shelf units, table and chairs, fireplace, and dumbwaiter. Later on I began on working on the detailing the models themselves. Using a variety of tools, like extruding, scaling, inserting faces etc, I was able to replicate almost photo-realistic look of objects.
When the basic models were done, I moved on to the next stage of texturing them. Texturing implies 2 main tasks: first in UW-unwrapping, second is shading. Since 3D art was a completely new area of study for me, I found those tasks quite uneasy. It involved geometrical layout of the objects, and while in a lot of cases it could be done automatically, yet some complex objects needed to be unwrapped manually for texture to be shown properly.
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The last stage was about lighting and final scene-creation. This stage involved a lot of my artistic skills like shot composition, focal point etc. Blender interface is quite easy to set up and I enjoyed this stage of the project a lot because the concept of curating a visual image was already familiar to me. At the end, I made several shots, 4 of which were chosen to be the final ones for the project hand-in.
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Final shots
Stage 3: Evaluation
As was mentioned before, the point of the project was to make an homage to Indiana Jones movie scene – an eye-ball soup, and to change the concept to one's own vision. Visual direction that I chose for this project was to go after 1990-2000s New York mafia look with architectural decisions inspired by movements at the time.
My final product has its strengths and weaknesses. In general, I think that my final 3D scene meets the criteria for being realistic. The textures I used, as well executed UV-unwrapping, made the objects and the final scene photo-like. Apart from that, the modelling itself, though simple, yet accurate to real life dimensions and silhouettes.
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Something I would like to improve on is environment development as a whole because in my opinion, the final product lacks personality. It could be solved an adding more objects that would add character to the scene. Besides that, even though I said that I did well with textures, one particular texture I would like to improve is liquid, because it is not realistic enough in my opinion.
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Overall, I thinks that as completely new person to 3D my project is well-done, however, there is a lot of room for improvement which could be solved through continuous practice and other project-making.