The World is a Steam Engine

high res quicktime file (34 mb)

Synopsis

A steam locomotive takes us on a journey through a steam filled environment. As the train chugs to the beat of the music, a sudden shift in time and space shows this ethereal world in all of its glory. The work as a whole is often viewed as a metaphor to ones passing life. We emerge from the fog, pass through its beauty, and end up somewhere unexpected.

About this Work
The World is a Steam Engine was originally a song I wrote in 2006. I removed the lyrics and turned the song into a short musical animation. The project served as my thesis for New York University's Center for Advanced Digital Application graduate degree program. It took 2 semesters to complete, one semester for previs and the other for production.

I am extremely grateful for this experience and for all of the support from my family, friends, classmates, and professors. This project really was an exercise in troubleshooting, and now that I have it under my belt I look forward to working on more ambitious projects like this in the future.

steam tree

Ok sorry for not updating for a while. Client work, crazy schedule, yadda yadda yadda...

Ive been working on my technique and I think I nailed it. Attached is a WIP of a tree. There will be many more of where this came from. If anyone is interested in helping make more of these please help! I will be training friends how to make trees like this next week. The more trees the better! When this animation gets played on the big screen, you can brag to all of your friends and say "I made that tree!"

Download the quicktime here: bonzai_looph264.mov - 574kb

Industry crit

industry crit: pdf 220 KB

Thesis Time

I spent the majority of my winter break getting myself together and organized for this upcoming thesis project. I built a home studio for recording and visual effects. It will come in handy when all of the computers are taken up at the CADA lab.

Now that I built this bunker in which I will be spending the next three months in, It is time to go through all of my previs work and plow ahead with this steam engine project. "Push the pedal to the metal efficiently" - thats my motto that will get me through the year.

Stay tuned!

Style Frame

 

Here is a style frame for my thesis. Rendered with Mental Ray and refined in Photoshop.

The making of this styleframe required many passes. I intend on implementing this workflow for my animation. Enjoy!

Thesis- just saw something really inspirational

Stumbled across this animated piece on CG talk. Josie's Lalaland By Eb Hu

The colors the glows, I love how everything is in motion. Everything was done in After Effects.

This is definately going to be an inspiration for my thesis.

Thesis Previs- A Realization

So after today's thesis previs session I came to the realization that the millions of little fish have to go. Although they are cool, they distract from the overall message.

The world is in constant motion. Everything in the entire universe is in motion. Even a seemingly stagnant chalkboard has on it millions of tiny little particles moving around at the subatomic level.
Objects have energy.

The title "The World is a Steam Engine" is a statement to this concept of everything in the world has motion.

After modeling objects in 3d for a while I saw the world differently. A good model has something called "Edge Flow." The way the polygons naturally flow around the contours of a shape will make a good model. I began seeing the world in wireframe. I would see lines that flowed with the contour of objects. where there were holes in an object I saw "edge-loops".

Last year I purchased a book called Character Modelling 2 published by Ballistic. A Featured modeller Timur Baysal introduced me to a new way of seeing edge flow.

He Said:
Some people use a deceiving term they call "edgeloop" for this process, which i find misleading. The edge-flow as i like to call it describes really both the design of your geometry as well as the way it wants to deform. Those edges really don't have to loop- you really don't want to look for where and when they might loop. Its most important to observe if they describe the proper form. I often end up with something that might be called an "edgespiral"- the techno-art -geek within me finds this really entertaining.

The "edge-spiral" is what intrigued me. With a spiral motion, edges can go on and on and on. As opposed to an "edge-loop" that end when closed.

I trained myself to see the world in wire-frame spirals, rather than wireframe loops. As a resul I began to see a different energy in objects. As if there was a stream of particles spiraling along the surfaces of objects.

With zbrush 3.0 's new re-topology tool, making spirals on geometry is much more feasible to do. Since I am a man who loves tedious work that results in something beautiful in the end, retopologizing geometry is something I love to do. This is something I also plan on becoming a master at after my thesis.

A spiral can be used as a path for particles. And I will be using retopologizing tools to achieve these edge-spirals on complex models like a steam engine.

The money shot will be a completed steam engine composed of tiny little spiraling particles.

Thesis - The World is a Steam Engine

Thesis Statement

The world is made up of millions of tiny fish. Schools of fish build the world as we know it by spiraling along the surfaces of objects.

Synopsis

You know those things that float around in your eye? Those are actually millions of tiny fish drawing the world as we know it. Everything from the people, trees, city, continents, and the world are nothing more than little goldfish.

The story takes place inside one floating eye dot. Inside this dot, schools of fish swim in spiraling patterns to create a train. Chugging along its tracks, the locomotive composed of tiny little fish passes a landscape of hills and trees which are also composed of these fish. The train’s blast pipe produces steam made up of fish. The steam of fish forms into people walking around a New York City block. The entire city, the entire state of New York, the United States, and the entire continent are all made up of these miniscule goldfish. From a distance, Earth is no more than just one of the many dots that float around in an eye.

Outline

Scene 01- Floating Eye Dots	it begins with a white screen. a narrator's voice "You know those floatie things in your eye?" Small transparent dots begin appearing on the screen. "Those are actually millions of tiny little goldfish." zoom in on one of the dots to reveal a swarm of fish. Begin Music
Scene 02- Title	The fish all swim in a flock and begin spelling out the title "The World is a Steam Engine"
Scene 03- The Steam Engine	The fish then begin to spiral, to create the front wheel of a locomotive train. Another swarm of fish start "spiraling out" the body of the train, and finally to the steam.
Scene 04- The World as we Know it	The fish steam shapes into people walking. Zooming out, we see that fish are drawing the city, country, and the world. As we zoom out on the world, it turns into one of the floatie things that you see in your eye.
Scene 05- A Dot Among Many	A large fish swims on screen and approaches the world/floatie thing. It opens its big mouth and gobbles it down.