2021 — Creative project by Giorgi Gasashvili — 3D, motion, sound design
Dante, Inferno
— Gio, Social Animals co-founder.
The project was created to participate in the Alternate Realities challenge. The work got into the TOP-25 out of 2400 participants from all over the world.
The render is inspired by Eugene Delacroix’s painting "Dante's Boat", the plot of which is based on the eighth song of hell from the work "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri.
"In this project, I made the most of my time management skills and the ability to work efficiently, quickly and make the best decisions, since the idea was grandiose, and the time to create the work, as well as the technical capabilities of the computer, was limited. This project took 2.5 weeks of almost continuous work and rendering.
The render composition needed to be divided into components:
I knew from the very beginning that I wouldn’t be able to render all of that in a single scene due to the technical limitations of the computer, so my compositing and post-production skills came in handy here.
I started with the water simulation, and, ideally, I would have added more details, but it was also important to keep going and include other components of the composition, so I achieved the most acceptable result and moved on to the next stage.
Next, I worked on the characters, and it was a very interesting step, since I interacted with cloth simulation. First, I designed the fabric, then to convey the feeling of heavy winds, I applied wind simulation to make the fabric react to air movements. It was a time-consuming process after which I added characters to the composition.
According to the conditions of the competition, a round shape had to be placed on the background, and I decided to include something like a portal there, for which I applied particle simulation. I created this simulation separately and then added it to the main composition. The same goes for the golden frame around the portal.
The clouds in the background are taken from the original painting, "The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum" by John Martin, which is now in the public domain. To add more dynamics, I cut the painting into 3 layers and then animated them separately. Next, in After Effects, I added lightning, which also highlighted the clouds.
As for the background, I decided to cut down on the production time by working entirely in post-production.
I found ready-made models of zombie-people and applied 5−6 different motion animations to these characters and filled the space underwater with them. There were a lot of characters, but I made enough of different animations so that there was no noticeable repetition. I decided that the most effective way to show the characters is to highlight the water at the moment when the lightning shoots.
The last step was the creation of people underwater. I wanted to add them from the very beginning, but I knew that building this whole scene would be a very time-consuming process, and the scene would still look great even if I wouldn’t manage to find time to add these characters. However, since in the previous stages I reduced the time and worked as efficiently as possible, I had the opportunity to add this piece as well.
At the very end, I added sound effects, thanks to which you are even more immersed in the atmosphere of the render".
• Water
• Background
• Main characters
Step 1: water, fabric simulation, main characters and portal
Step 3: eye-catching details and sound effects
Step 2: background in post-production