Passenger

[Neilg]

Better in motion...

https://vimeo.com/352850294


Been trying to get a personal project done for years - have so many i've started and thrown out after storyboarding/early on. Usually they are too ambitious, so this was an attempt at keeping the scope tight and sticking to the original plan no matter what, for better or worse. It was supposed to be a visual metaphor but I'm not sure that lands.

Very intentionally as far removed from day-job work as possible. Lots of fx, all phoenix & tyflow.

For the last 2 weeks i've been posting the assets to my instagram, so that sort of works as a reverse-making of now that it's done.
https://www.instagram.com/neilgrfis/

It's also now on artstation for non-instagram people - https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EVKyY2



Started in mid April, but then sat on the scene blocking for 6 weeks before I did anything else. Took somewhere between 80-100 hours to totally finish, including arsing about making an extra 25 renders of the assets.

Rendered in 4k. A decision I regretted more than once, but could not have done without the nvidia denoiser. It causes a ton of artifacts, but my render time was 9 minutes a frame for the base pass which is ludicrous. At the settings I used the vray denoiser didn't kick in and refused to even try, no matter the settings. With no denoiser it would have taken 6 hours a frame to get a clean image, probably longer. It was a fun challenge to work around. not sure i'd use it for client work though.

[fixeighted]

Pretty cool
I like the fact that the audio matches the jittery credits at the end - was thinking that during the dolly move in that you could edit this to mimic that jitter as it resolves, if you get my meaning.

I don't know that I get the metaphor but clearly there's a concept and it delivers on that in terms of feel and direction. Feel free to elaborate on the theme and I'll get it

[Ihno]

Beautiful!

[Neilg]

Pretty cool
I like the fact that the audio matches the jittery credits at the end - was thinking that during the dolly move in that you could edit this to mimic that jitter as it resolves, if you get my meaning.

I don't know that I get the metaphor but clearly there's a concept and it delivers on that in terms of feel and direction. Feel free to elaborate on the theme and I'll get it

The audio matches a lot of things! every piece of animation was matched to a reference track before the sounds were replaced. it's very subtle, but it all locks to 96 bpm.

The metaphor is loose - the light is intentionally a bit godly, the 'passenger' is visually something we'd see as an evil, it's from the inside of man.
A display of salvation that only begins when under scrutiny, that sort of thing. It probably doesnt hold up to analysis, early on the visuals took over as the driving force.

Edit: I forgot to mention, but that's how I ended up looking for some visual references from Lucinda develin's 'the omega suites' that i could incorporate early on - https://www.lucindadevlin.com/the-omega-suites
I warmed it up a lot and took some areas in a different direction - but the observation room, a creature of man, and a blurred line between standard sci-fi observation and it putting on a show for redemption were the initial ideas. Everything else (like the gas - thanks Buck!) was there because I thought it would look cool and be fun to make...

[Buck]

Very cool

Love the gas emitting from the wall vent