ROLE
3D Artist
Simulation Artist
RnD
DURATION
6 months
TOOLS
Houdini
Blender
Nuke
After Effects
Description.
Atrophy is a 3D animated music video. It was created as the 2nd masters project for the Realtime Arts & Visual Effects program at the University of applied sciences Salzburg. The track was provided by student colleagues Julius Jungwirth and David Kronawitter who created and refined the track along side of the production process.
Each of the core members had a designated area of response for the project. Lena was the Art Director and provided the style guide with color palettes, mood boards and design choices. Gregor was responsible for keeping everyone on track, making sure tasks are completed and deadlines respected, essentially producing the project. Michael was the story lead, wrote several versions of the script and incorporated everyone’s random thoughts into a coherent story. My responsibility was to figure out how we would do the effects and simulations and create procedural workflows.
Apart from that all of us had designated shots we worked on from start to finish.
Idea.
The core idea is to combine drum and base track with topic of deeper meaning and message. A microscopic infection grows into a city-wide plague, visualizing how extremist ideology spreads. Pressing individuals into conformity, eroding institutions, and consuming thought itself until nothing remains. We wanted to show how information, ideologic views etc. in a modern world can start of small and spread until it becomes a world wide phenomenon. Metaphorical for this we used the symbol of a fungus/infection that is spreading and selectively contaminating everything in its path.
Behind The Scenes.
For the main effect that spans through the entire video I tried different approaches. The first version was purely texture based. This lead to some verry realistic movement but lacked the artistic controllability. Secondly I explored several simulation based methods that offered some more control but ultimately still lacked the fine tuning. Finally I settled for a fully procedural curve based tool that could be adjusted per shot.