This is some work that I set myself outside of school hours as I wanted to experiment with the theme of 'Altered States' in a medium that I was more experienced with and that I loved to use. I decided that I would try and make some sort of animation within Unreal Engine that involved an environment that had an element of an altered state. I began to work on a storyboard for events that could take place within this environment. I designed and planned more shots then I intended to make just so I could provide myself with different creative choices on which ones I end up making.
Out of the total 26 shots that I planned for I ended up making 10 of them, this wasn't going to be a finished quality animation as these were only test shots as an experiment.
The storyboard I created used 26 shots to narrate the story of a young character exploring this surreal landscape along with this birdlike fantasy companion that would lead him through this world. I used the research about camera angles and shots that I had conducted to begin to form a storyboard of events. I had a certain shot that a I had noted down and make sure that I used, this was the dolly zoom / vertigo zoom. There is something about this shot that just enhances the scene and the emotion of what is happening within the moment.
Once I began working on this animation in Unreal Engine I knew that I would have to start picking some of the shots that I wished to make as I had a limited amount of time to complete this work. The shots that I ended up picking included:
-Shot 1
-Shot 3
-Shot 5
-Shot 6
-Shot 11
-Shot 13
-Shot 20
-Shot 21
-Shot 24
-Shot 26 / 27
I picked these shots as these were some of the most fleshed out ideas as well as them being my favourite ones.
I had 3 images that acted as my main inspiration for this animation, these images are below:
Before I had even started storyboarding I had the idea in my head that before the character reached this area of surreal floating islands, they would first have to travel through a cave. I ended up going against this idea of creating a cave scene as I knew I was limited by time and how many shots I would be able to create so I thought it would be best for me to keep all of the scenes based within one scene / location. I was unable to find the credit of the artist for the first image sadly.
The second image (the one on the right) is created by one of my favourite online artists called, 'Grandfailure' on the website Dreamstime.com when I saw this image I was just so surprised and shocked by the beauty of the landscape and the colour scheme and I knew that I really wanted to somehow link this to my project. The concept and design was so surreal and I found it difficult to look away and I discovered this artist to be my new favourite as their work inspired me so much and just looked so powerful.
Here is the final video below:
I really tried to capture the beauty and surrealistic scene that I was trying to build, I believe that I had mostly achieved that however it does not match the level of work that I saw in my reference image. This was extremely fun to work on and I know that this artist is going to keep on inspiring me though later projects!
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