WEEK5

This week I solved one of the problems that has bothered me for the longest time, which is the establishment of the scene style. I spent more time doing aesthetic research. Because I used a lot of different styles, it was easy to create a sense of dissonance. At first, I wanted to create a world with strong colors, using the design and structure from the classic Windows screen background, trying to create a crazy feeling. But it turned out badly. Last week, I realized that this problem had to be solved, so I thought that no matter how many models I made, they might all end up being useless. Then I researched the current visual achievements of the metaverse, but none were satisfactory. I think most people, like me, don’t immediately think of a classic design when hearing the word "metaverse," unlike cyberpunk, which has well-known references.

The process was complicated, but here’s my conclusion.

I chose surrealism as the base for the scene layout. Breton, who proposed it, was influenced by Freud, The visual style is also very appealing. But surrealist paintings are flat, and the sense of space is weak, which makes it hard to convert them into 3D. So, I used the aquarium tunnel as a visual guide (the design of the tunnel also includes the style of props I’ll introduce later). This gives a clear path: the goldfish won’t be able to break through this route at first but will later choose the goal in the scene. Both the start and the end have shapes to make the audience feel the space.

Secondly, I used acidism for the props design, which comes from the Y2K style. But I’ll combine past UI designs to improve the props, making something impractical, purely for visuals. I like vintage things, so my favorite parts in the short film, like the fish tank toy and game console, are also based on old objects, and I will modify them in the same way. This way, boring mechanical designs become more fun. Later, I’ll add elements like coral with changing textures to enhance the unreal feeling.

Finally, some rendering problem in Blender that I haven’t solved yet. I want the visuals to be as flat as possible, not rendered in a realistic style. For example, I added some noise to the bridge, but it doesn’t fit well in this style, so it looks flat because there are no shadows. I originally used realistic rendering. This is where I’m stuck right now. Still working on it.