Senior Project

Final project update

I finally finished Worst Enemy and I am quite happy with the turnout given the struggles I had to overcome with switching over and starting from scratch.

The video may not make sense if the viewer doesn’t know what it’s about prior or doesn’t read the artist statement. The statement and the animation are co-dependent on one another and together is what makes it strong.

I thoroughly enjoyed animating this piece as it’s a bit special to me and is personal to my experiences in the past. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to convey experiences through words, so it’s easier for me to turn it into an artwork in hopes to show myself in this method.

Artist statement:

Worst Enemy is a 2D animation highlighting several of my childhood traumas through multiple rooms within an eerie house. Suspenseful music, harsh truths, and taunting whispers are a few elements that make this piece frightening. The intention is not to replicate the typical horror genre, but to show the specific horror of experiencing an individual’s personal struggles. Rather than using a “smooth” 2D animation style, I utilized a soft fade between actions and scene changes to emulate the overall feeling of watching someone else’s flashbacks.

Though I have not been able to unpack my traumas from a young age through words, I feel I can express them through my art. Although others may not fully understand whatI have faced, I hope through art to express and relieve some of the pain I have been holding for many years.

Lastly, here’s the link to the making of video.

Worst Enemy – Update

I have finally started a portion of my animation and here are a few frames to show progress:

I decided to make the entire animation in black and white (to keep simple but also convey a sense of eeriness with the all black background).

I have also decided to cut my original storyboard and keep it to one room rather than having multiple rooms where the main character encounters multiple “fears”. This will be a better way to focus on what I want and not get sidetracked with trying to animate other scenes where it could possibly feel incomplete.

Major project updates:

Due to the pandemic, I had to switch up my project entirely. Because all of the labs and other resources had been shut down because of covid-19, I only had access to my own laptop. When rendering in Maya, it also froze up my entire computer and I couldn’t work on anything else, so I ended up switching to a brand new 2D animation.

I am keeping the same story concept, however, because I know this will not exactly translate the same feeling from a 3D perspective, I will utilize music and sound effects to help bring the feel of fear to the animation.

Storyboard

For my Senior project, I am to creating a horror 3D animation where the viewer will be going through an environment where it’s filled with fears. These “fears”, are my own personal fears or things that I have experienced growing up. They’re not necessarily what one would consider your typical fears (like monsters under the bed), but rather deeply ingrained personal issues and experiences. I think these would have more of an impactful stance within my animation.

I also wanted to originally have this as a 3rd person point of view but I knew I was going to eat up most of my time trying to rig a human because of the specific movements I wanted, so I ended up changing it to a 1st person POV (aka the camera/the viewer).

Sound and music are also going to be one of the most important factors in the animation as well. Combined with the visuals, I think it’d make certain scenes within the video more impactful.

The total number of rooms I am to have is about 6-7 (may fluctuate due to how long it takes things to render and if I can tweak things based on feedback).

Concept Rooms Sketches

After realizing how much stuff I want to put into this animation, I decided to whittle it down to 3 rooms for now and if I wanted more, I can add more.

The doll room:

• visual:
  • hanging, tattered dolls by ropes
  • maybe a bit of swaying?
  • probably won’t rig
• sound/audio:
  • whispers of insulting things, manipulation, etc.
  • giggling, taunting

Knife room:

• visual:
  • when the door opens, knives come flying at the viewer
  • some will fly into the wall, some will be dodged, some will hit the viewer
• sounds/audio:
  • knives whizzing past, stabbing sounds, but the viewer doesn’t “die”
    • indicative of how the pain felt, but couldn’t “die” as a result of it
    • must deal with the pain regardless
  • stabbing sounds once hitting the “body”

Snake room:

• visual:
  • will be met with a door separating a large, hungry snake and the viewer
  • will probably have to rig a bit of it….
  • will leave once the frog is given
• sounds/audio:
  • hissing, heavy breathing, crashing/moving around, etc.
• representation of emotionally abusive friendship with ex-friend and how i was treated as a tool or a servant

Current state of rooms right now:

*still needs to be textured

* will replace hanging balls with dolls

*will also remove most furniture, looks too cluttered to be horror-esque?

*need to finish 2nd room, probably finish 3rd room by mid project crit

**need to begin modeling the “characters” present in the animation