Elevator + Tutorial Elevator, 2018, digital environment + animation. UPDATE: Tutorial added.

UPDATE: I’ve recorded a short tutorial explaining a few techniques I used in making this, which you can watch below.

Elevator, 2018, digital environment + animation.

Concept

I first had the idea for this project several months ago in a rare moment of spontaneous insight. The prompt “who lives here?” was knocked loose from whichever precarious shelf in my brain it had been thoughtlessly placed upon earlier and was challenged with “no, what lives here?”. I saw this place immediately in my mind and quickly sketched it out.

I knew from the beginning that this scene shouldn’t include any characters or creatures, but I found imagining what they might look like to be a critical part of creating the environment. Throughout the inspiration and concept development phase I spent more time thinking about what lies outside the frame than inside. I had to imagine where the passengers of this carriage might be going, how they got there, how they interacted with their world, etc. However, I claim no authority to tell the viewer that my ideas of who and what lives here are correct, and to that end I will not share them.

Conceptually this is a portrait of negative space: what isn’t shown is the most important part of the piece. The only person riding the elevator is you.

Execution

One of the main takeaways from this project was just how useful having structured, thoughtful asset and project management policies in place can be. In working on this I managed to retain the ability to edit almost all of the objects without breaking the link to the final scene. This sounds straightforward, and really it is, but it’s tough to maintain the discipline it takes when working by yourself and for yourself. It’s also pretty tough to work on a project this size if you haven’t been diligent with the boring things, however, so I think I will find it easier going forward now that I’ve seen the other side.

Tutorial

Here is the formula for the external angles of a regular polygon: 180 - [((n-2)*180) / n] where n= the number of vertices of your polygon