The Drive Home - Animation Project
What is this?
I've decided to create this blog to make myself accountable for myself, to prove that I can finish something of my own, to drive through the procrastination that most humans ( especially artists ) deal with.
For a while now, I had an idea, to create something that resembles an experience everyone goes through, or a situation that most people can relate to. I've always been interested in creating experiences rather than games or animations and I only managed to pop out one real-time experience a year ago. So by utilizing the blog feature of Artstation I will try to complete this project.
What to expect:
I will commit to constant updates through posts, either to discuss the main decisions for the project or for showing something that I have achieved.
I will provide weekly updates to show progress ( every weekend ).
I will only be posting this on Artstation and share it on my Linkedin Social Media ( I don't have an art account for Instagram ).
I do encourage anyone who has any comments on my work to please post it, I do take critique into consideration and I do appreciate anyone who follows this.
What now?
So the next step would be to explain the project, to show planning or any visuals that I've done so far...
I will be using Blender for all the 3D work, I'm still deciding if I want to add it into a game engine like Unity or UE4, I usually work in an optimized manner, so I'll most probably try doing a render inside Eevee first and see how my PC handles it. But I would want to render it in cycles to create a propper animation out of this project for sure!
My Animation Rational:
The Drive Home
I finished my studies in 3D Animation and Game Design in 2018, and got a job in Architectural Rendering in 2019, Doing Archviz was a great learning experience, but it often required me to work late at night, on occasion public holidays, and even weekends ( Sundays included ). This being my first job ever, I made it my main priority, not making time for anything or anyone else. This way of handling it made me go from being in control and enjoying the work I've done to be in survival mode, just doing what I've made the norm. Repeating every day. And I've experienced the "Autopilot" scenario more than a few times.
The idea is to show a POV of someone driving at night, this person is alone on the road, for the most part, the radio is playing and this person is heading home after a long day of work. The animation is to convey the almost habitual / ritual of what most people experience in their everyday lives. Every day is a repeat and sometimes you don't even remember how you got home... the scary realization that you were consciously asleep during your drive home, not knowing if you skipped a stop sign or drove over a red Light...
This is what I have to show so far:
- I have a reference board:
Pinterest board of my References for the main elements of the animation.
- I've made a Lighting render on the mood of what I'm trying to convey:
A quick prototype Animatic on what the view will look like throughout the animation ( Raw file ) :
3D Animatic
Rough roadmap of this project:
Writing and sharing about the project ( weekly updates )
Environment Design for the overall scene ( 1 week )
*Modeling of the vehicle interior ( 2 Weeks )
*Modeling of the buildings ( 1 Week )
*Modeling of the Street details ( 3 Days )
*Modeling of the POV character arms ( 3 Days )
The rigging of character arms ( 2 Days )
Animating [ traditional/mocap ] ( N/A )
*Assets will be sourced either for use, placeholders, or references.