https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR5tgpDuN7k
Concept:
When I saw the giant paper forehead sculpture upon entering this room for the first time, I immediately started conceptualizing in my head how I could make it look really cool. After lots of brainstorming, I decided that I wanted to create the illusion of the forehead sculpture opening up to reveal the universe behind it. As time progresses, the window view of the universe zooms out further and further until eventually the scene is filled with billions upon billions of galaxies in frame. The message I want to get through this piece is that space is so vast, and we often tend to get caught up in the trivialities of this small world and worry about pointless drama but if we just take a moment to remember that we are living in a near-infinitely small window of space and time, than we can take a deep breath and enjoy the precious moments that we as a sentient species floating on a rock in space are given. There is also music that goes with this project, the song I picked was Parabola by Tool because it shares a similar message and fits the vibe of the composition.
Techniques:
I used a plethora of different programs for this assignment. I started in Maya by importing the forehead 3D model and then modifying it by separating the peace sign from the center and making it it's own object. I then used the knife tool to cut lines in the face radiating from the hole in the center. This is so the face can open up like a blooming onion. After that, I selected all the faces and extruded them to make the model have a thickness to it. I also duplicated the peace sign and modelled it into a sun with a face on it, trying to keep the flow of the original geometry in the sun. After I modelled all the planets and everything else, I went through the tedious process of UV unwrapping everything and then exported everything into Substance Painter to create my textures. I then created textures for the forehead, peace sign, the planets, and the eyeballs. After I exported the textures into Maya, it was time to do a little rigging. I rigged the eyes of the sun and the main face so that they would both turn when I moved their control. I used blend shapes to animate the face opening up as well as the eye blinks for the sun and the face. As the scene progresses, all the objects in and outside of the frame start to move away from the camera until the solar system is no longer visible. At this point is where I go from Maya to Premiere Pro for the remainder of the project. I use keyframes in Premiere to animate all the galaxies zooming out, and then reversed the entire clip so that everything zooms back into the face and the whole video loops now. I also made sure to animate this project to fit with the timings on the song. Finally I imported the mp4 file into MadMapper and made sure it fit onto the sculpture.
Interpretation:
For the most part I am pleased with how this project turned out, however there are some things that didn't quite turn out the way I had thought they would. The first thing being the sun and how it blends in with the peace sign medallion on the physical sculpture. When modelling the sun, like I said earlier I tried to keep the flow of the original geometry in the sun. In the Maya scene, the sun looked great with a good contrast between the highlights and the shadows.
In the projection, however, the sun appeared way to bright and you could not make out any of the shadows. This was also the first time I have animated within Premiere so some of the animations are a bit wonky, but other than that I like how this thing turned out.
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