“Oh [REDACTED], Where Art Thou?”

This project was my college thesis, which I worked on my entire senior year. The landscape and elements are all 3D objects that I individually rendered and digitally composted together into one scene. Below is my official project statement.

“This project places the human experience under a microscope and dissects the futility of life as a way of analyzing and, further, understanding the meaninglessness of our everyday life. This ideology is reshaped from a pessimistic viewpoint and molded into a presentation of facts, ones humans often grapple with and repaint for their comfort. I ask viewers to sit within this discomfort and explore their reality while diving deeper into their own psyche. Life removed from human ideological creations and presented as its bare bones is the foundation of this project. This philosophy is displayed through a triptych where I bring a painting to life using 3D models and animation. Set in a Lovecraftian-inspired hellscape, this moving painting uses visual allegories and symbolism as a means to take its viewer on a trip to hell. Operating within the realm of the uncanny and unnatural juxtaposed with a harsh philosophy of life, I hope to generate a visual representation of purgatory, more commonly known as life.”

My work was showcased at two art exhibitions at Virginia Tech, the Studio Armory as well as the Moss Arts Center.

My work on display at the Virginia Tech Studio Armory and the Moss Arts Center

Above is my full, rendered project. This video has also been projection mapped, as the finished project was projected on a wall and framed, with real, gold frames, to appear like a triptych. I wanted to combine CGI and real, tangible elements to visually articulate the marriage of technology and the natural world. Additionally, I wished to display the final video as a triptych to mimic the ornate and beautiful religious works that Catholicism is known for.

In order to create this final project, I individually rendered all my 3D elements, including the non-static elements, from MAYA and compiled them into one scene using AfterEffects. Each MAYA element was masked in AfterEffects in order to create a transparent background. This would allow me to combine all of the elements, moving and static, into a single frame. From there, I spliced the compiled video into three sections to create the triptych. Lastly, I used MadMapper to ensure the blacked out sections of my actual video were the proper size to be hidden by the real frames when projected for display. I used this technique, rather than making three separate vidoes, as I wanted each section of the triptych to interact with one another. The gold bacteria blimp I created floats between all three triptych sections, appearing to move in one, singular motion. I achieved this by masking the bacteria blimp’s movement to confined sections of the triptych so it would look as if it were disappearing. I then copied the blimp’s motion so it would then ‘reappear’ on the other side of the triptych, ensuring that the tail-end of the first mask’s movement aligned with the start of the second mask’s movement. This created the blimp’s movement effect, which appears to ‘go behind’ the blacked out sections (aka the real frames) and then reappear on the other side/other triptych section.

For finishing touches, I used AfterEffects to create a 1980s VHS effect by copying the video three times and adjusting the greens, reds, and blues of each section. I then created movement for each section so I could create a static effects. I added on some grain and noise to this as well. Additionally, I added the text onto the computer in the bottom left. It reads “Anyone there?” and is followed by a flashing cursor, the kind you see while waiting to continue typing. Lastly, I added sound by recording people talking and overall noise inside a metro station. I also recorded myself yelling so I could insert that into sections of the audio. I found a recording of a saxophone player and combine all of these sound elements together, adding some noise and playing around with echos and pitches.

For this project I used MAYA, Substance Painter 3D, AfterEffects, Premiere Pro, and MadMapper.