References and Ideas!

Since I couldn’t settle on a clear scene yet, I decided to explore compositions while sketching my ideas; finding ways to frame a bowl of eyeball soup with me in it, and telling a story thats more than just the objects themselves.

These sketches, plus plenty of Pinterest scrolling, led me to a story and atmosphere board I really wanted to explore

LORE TIME!

The goal of my scene is to tell a story about a craznoodle shop cook with a bad temper.After hours, he lures rude customers he served during service back into the kitchen, brutally murders them (leaves a mess everywhere), and dissects their bodies, taking out eyeballs and blending their flesh into smoothie to use in the tomorrow’s prize-winning noodle broth.The character is impulsive yet meticulous: he follows recipe books down to the exact gram and uses precise surgical tools (like suture scissors and specific bone saws) but still leaves the kitchen a bloody mess after hours.Below is the atmosphere I wanted to convey:

With the help of my lovely tutors (thank you guys for being so patient with my crazy ideas), I decided on a dark kitchen scene.This way, while telling my story and diving into all my gory, disgusting ideas, I could also model tons of clutter and hardware (which I love!)Modeling metal panels is totally my thing, and I couldn’t wait to start on grills and fridges… but first, some planning was in order.

The Conception of Concept Art

I first picked one of my rough sketches and re-blocked out 2 slightly different angles of the same scene.

I ended up picking the one on top because of how much of the kitchen you could see

That, along with the server/waiter window I could be placed behind pretty much confirmed that it was the correct composition

I then refined it on A3 paper, and scanned it onto my tablet so I could clean up the sketch digitally.

RESEARCH!

Taking the refined sketch, I started researching common commercial kitchen appliances and made a reference sheet.

Now that I've looked at the same kitchen griddle for way too long, I could draw a finalized and accurate concept piece to build my 3d scene off of.

2D OVER! 3D TIME

Modelling pt.1

I knew what I wanted, I had the references, It's time to open Blender.

Appending time <3

Everything was surprisingly smooth sailing. There were no noticeable scale, geometry or modelling issues at all (other than having to fix my circle array)- sigh*... I'll soon regret saying that

I think I phrased it quite well on my PDF submission so I'll just put that here:

I honestly don't hate UV unwrapping- especially since all the stuff here was hard surface near-cubes. Much easier than shirts and organic stuff.Blenderkit gets one big boom from me

HERE COMES FILMINGGGG

I made the filming deadline with ease as well, bringing in a render and light map for green screen shooting.Ok not really with ease I struggled with the lighting so much I had 5 separate renditions of the same scene....

(the above is a slideshow- wait for it...)

Honestly, they all look pretty similar so im not even sure what I was fretting about.I'll spare you the thousands of images of my rendered scenes (i assume you've read the submission PDF) and show you some footage of me being extremely embarrassed in front of the green screen.light map btw:

the process of filming only took around 10 minutes, with most of it being lights moved around.

hey look at this stupid video i made showing off the key but its too compress and blurry to see properly :c

After exporting the keyed footage into Blender, I also adjusted the RGB curves to better match the harsh, high-contrast lighting of the scene.

SUBSTANCE 3D PAINTER

by the second week i was already finished modelling everything needed including tiny lids on bottles and bolts on shelvesthis is where the challenge is

• Link to Substance Academy

This was the course I followed, and it covered everything I needed to weather and dirty hard surface items(it was the wrong version though so some stuff caused a bit of trouble-
nothing google cant fix)

very easily (30 minutes tops) i could get my walls to look-

ok i admit its a somewhat bad comparison shot but the artistic control i was able to have on each spec of dirt and grime was something this project needed.

it instantly made the scene feel less like a barbie dream house and instead much more... disgusting.

Speaking of UV, now is a great time to show off my mediocre hand unpacking skills

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did some hand drawn mats as shown in the PDF

Cheating

oops you caught memy final scene has 11 lights, 13 if we go by the original plan (they were taken out for rendering sake)
while blender's light simulation is quite accurate and honestly totally enough for the purposes of this project, i wanted more artistic control over the highlights and shadows each item might produce. i already had a diffcult scene to light as everything was stainless steel and extremely reflective- making my selective harsh highlights diffcult to achieve without 'cheating'.cheating- which is me using light linking and taking advantage of rendering settings to create unrealistic lighting patterns that add to the atmosphere and visual appeal of my scene.

the best example of that is this, a floor glow 'produced' by an internal fridge lightit would be impossible to achieve the shape i wanted with the position of the fridge body and door, so with light linking, i faked the lighting effects to cast a stark spotlight on the floor where a pool of blood was.then, using a plane invisible to the camera, i adjusted the shape of the spot to direct the light in the areas i wanted it to be inthis similar set up is present 3 more times in my scene, highlighting shelves and the edges of counters to create the final look.

Compositing

you might think its subtle and not worth the hassle + extra rendering time, but the addition of vignette and fog (using a Z pass) allowed me to direct the focal point precisely to the counters. It also helped balance the scene’s colors, enhancing overall cohesion!

FINISHED!

hey hey come check out the final piece!

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  Final Render

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  Final Render w Me

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  Washing

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  Cooking

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  Observing

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  Consuming

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Video (with effects)

Video (no effects)

Afterthoughts:Honestly, although im happy with the final outcome i do feel like i couldve done better under different circumstances.for one, maybe not rush into creating stainless steel metalic items? i feel like i lost a lot of that east asia touch and i couldve incorporated more chinese and japanese noodle bar elements like wooden units instead of metal etcthe bowl of noodles itself was also sort of weird looking, although i guess that was to be expected since i dont like modelling organic things (ill learn!)i also, after messing with it for weeks couldnt get my key'd out video to interact with the reflections and light without the plane holding the video affect the shadows- which resulted in the end result looking like im just floating there instead of being apart of the scenestill, im proud.

Henry! (its a working title)

"My comfort zone is drawing delicate women wearing flowy dresses. Lets do a 180 to challenge myself"

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  Initial Design 1

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  Initial Design 2

(click on the images to expand it)

I knew I wanted a sea animal, and jellyfish just seemed fitting. I had cool ideas of Henry not having any eyelids and used his little jellyfish head, shaping him like some 2000s rapper that thinks he's cool.I wanted him to like humans, and want to become one how a little girl might want to become a unicorn. Picking up discarded scraps of clothing, he would dress himself up and walk in a humanoid fashion to seem cool.Although he started as a jellyfish, through iterations and mini doodles, he began to resemble more like an octopus, and I went along with it.

Concept:

It wasnt... cool enough- it was just so generic and lacked features that really made him unique. He wasnt dramatic enough and the shape was boring. There will always be character archetypes that focus on wanting to become something theyre not but what makes him different?I tried to experiment with different shapes, using shape language as a way to set himself apart from any generic octopus.Despite looking objectively cute, he lacked personality.

Stuff like this was just lacking...I had to revisit the drawing board and start somewhere else that isnt so vague. I needed clear artisitc direction.

Going back to my mood board and references, I started to pick apart why I liked each character on that list. Why how despite looking cute and obeying all the 'rules' that made a character relatable, mine lacked the charm these characters had. Henry lacked depth.Caine and Megamind seemed like the perfect reference for adorably relatable characters that were somewhat morally ambiguous.I loved the idea of an evil scientist on the surface but a cute boyish cat-like personality behind closed doors.

Here is where I really put that evil scientist feel into his character, and suddenly the designs made sense. Even the more rounded egg-shape designs looked cohesive and reasonable, and they even carried a little more charm.I eventually landed on a triangular / pyramid head to not only represent the sinister obsessive side of Henry, but also to contrast the fleshy organic shapes present throughout his design.

(not sponsored by jurassic park)The triangular oversized head also allowed me to almost point it like an arrow, making poses fun and dynamic.

This is the first detailed concept of evil Henry. Now, he didnt just want to be a human one day, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure he is one.Grafting cybernetic limbs onto himself, experimenting on fellow sea life... grafting a human eye onto one side of his head... all to the point where he has to be on constant life support to sustain it.His body dysmorphia was really unsettling, but yet- relatable.

I then sketched up a quick overview of what poses he might possibily find himself in, and how he may show his expressions.

Although I originally found it difficult to express exaggerated emotions without eyebrows or a real mouth, you'll soon find out that I managed ;)

FINAL PIECES!

As to why I named him Henry?I wanted his name to reflect who he was on the inside. A little boy, who just had a dream to become something else.

Choice was originally made as a stupid project for my friends because I wanted to convince them that their personalities reflected in everyday choices. It was originally called 'The Alcie Psychic Project' and was built entirely online using a visual novel maker.I then used the available generative AI at the time (running locally on my own computer) to create unique backdrops based on each player’s ending. For example, if someone got the 'MBTI: INTP ENDING- you didn’t water the flowers,' DALL-E would generate a new scene reflecting their choices, which would then show up in the next player’s playthrough.Since it was made just for my friends, the choices limited and were tailored to their MBTI types. (figuring out every possible personality combo would’ve taken forever.)When I then shared my progress on Twitter, many other friends in the community got curious and wanted to try it out, so I then sent the game to them too, making it a limited access- but public game.(Fun fact! Before this limited semi-public release, I also added in a global chat function, which was extremely broken and almost crash the game)

For example:

Ending/ upon next play through/ next player:

Based on my hair in real life at the time, I made the 3D character asset Kalifornia.

Blender + Liquid Sims