Dragon Bait and Animate

I was thinking today about an older concept I had when I started developing the current idea for 'Cure' and I think it would be easier for me to focus on research on something I really care about: Mental Health. The narrative throughout 'Cure' was initially developed with the thought of depression and loneliness being at the centre. The loneliness aspect was singled out for most of the continued development but I would like to bring it back to its roots of depression. With this in mind, I spent today thinking about lighting. After running a couple of tests in Maya, (Lighting in Maya is hard) I sketched up some rough thumbnails of how I wanted the lighting to appear to the audience. So I want to run some more tests and practice lighting in general for the future. In other news, I put together a little comparison image of some concept art and the final model.

After yesterday and today I'm feeling a lot more confident in the my general story idea. I like the pace and tone and now just need to find out what the ending means to me. I had several ideas about what it could mean including the guilt of selfishness as the character sits alone in a dead world as well as the feeling of loneliness and that no matter what my character did she was ultimately alone which I know can happen to people all over the world. However, yesterday we had a fantastic workshop with Mark Grindle where we got to talk about our ideas and hear his feedback. To him, my ending was comparable to the digital age and the loss of ourselves/humanity in a digital environment and I really like that concept, especially considering it's in a 3D setting. As for the story itself, there's one image that keeps sticking with me so I quickly drew it out today in Photoshop in about an hour to try and get it solidified in my head. I like the idea of the camera being close up ...

The biggest concern for me with my masters project is not having a story that will entice an audience, despite the fact that to me, the story is not the most important part of the project. I want to focus on style and using the 3D software to make the world look sharp and 3-Dimensional. However, I have spent the last week or so trying to develop something more solid as a story - as well as simplifying what I have. Our character is first seen walking through rows of medical tents. She is losing polygons that fall to the ground to leave a trail of pulsing red shards. As she continues, we see that she is following a beep on her wrist monitor until she pulls back a tent flap and finds what she was looking for. This is something that can cure her, a USB stick or an SD card, something that she slots into the wrist monitor (That is possibly a part of her) cures her. The pulsing red trail of polygons stops and fades and she lets out a sigh of relief. But everywhere she looks there are piles ...