THESIS: THE SABBATH
The Sabbath is a short film created by myself for my senior thesis at the School of Visual Arts. I wrote, modeled, textured, simulated the clothing, rigged, animated, and rendered this entire with some help in the effects by Das Furst in shot 21 (1:30). This film was inspired by a culmination of horror films that deeply moved me such as the VVItch and Hereditary, the painting The Witches Sabbath by Franciso Goy which inspired the title fo the film, and my dark imagination that refuses to stop. My intent with this film was to really have the audience really feel this film and have this shocked reaction, and I think I achieved that. I was really inspired by classical art eras such as the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romanticism and I wanted to merge the feeling that I felt when looking paintings from those periods and merge it with my art style which is why I decided to render using Arnold Toon Shader. It gave the classical look with darker graphic undertones. Also, my choice in simulating the clothing, which was done in Marvelous Designer, added to this classical look that was present in pains from these periods.
This film is about transformation and rebirth, it is about understanding and relishing the inner truths of the human experience and not running away from it. It's understanding that it's okay to be scared, but the outcome at the end will leave you more powerful and stronger than you thought you could ever become. This film feels close to me because all my art has always been a reflection of myself and I keep it close to me. I am very proud of this piece because it much represents the fear and anxiety I had while making this, thinking how could I do this all on my own or if it was even possible? This film inadvertently has become and a direct reflection of my feelings of making it and I definitely came out much stronger and knowledgable than I ever thought.
Maya, Substance Painter, Arnold, Speed Tree, Zbrush, and Advanced Skeleton
(2020)
CONCEPT
When I set out to make my film I initially had no idea what look I wanted or what direction I wanted to take. I was heavily focused on the feeling aspect. I was so drawn to this deep feeling I felt when I wrote the store and the intensity that it exuded. I knew I wanted to create something not only dark, but dramatic and somewhat historical in a sense, so I took myself back to my knowledge of art history and took a lot of inspiration from not only the Baroque, Romanticism, and Renaissance eras, but specifically Carravaggio. His use of dramatic lighting to tell his story in his work was something I was specifically drawn to and I wanted to capture that with my film. Along the way, I decided I wanted something a little more graphic compared to the more traditional work of those eras to create something new, but also very reminiscent of its roots.
CHARACTERS
For me, the story came first and the characters. When writing the story I played the girl and the mother was also a version of me that =t I understood was separate from myself, but was also me. This made it partially hard for me to visualize the characters separately outside of myself so the process of designing the characters was a very hard challenge. For me, the daughter was the main focus of the story and it was really her story to tell, so the other characters became secondary. I wanted the daughter to look very wide-eyed and innocent almost like the sheep that she had to sacrifice. The mother became this older version of the daughter almost as if she was looking at herself, but wasn't aware of it. The follower were essentially faceless beings that carried daughter to her purpose.
The story and the purpose of the story meant more than the character's names and the assumptions one could make about those names and that's why I decided to keep them nameless.