The Backrooms
Narrative Brainstorm
When conceptualising the protagonist's journey through the backrooms, I made a list of possible events that could happen along the way. I organised these events into a coherent narrative by arranging them in sequential order and dividing them into the beginning, middle, and ending categories.
Mood board
To draw inspiration for the project's aesthetic, I created a mood board that illustrated the final look I intended to achieve. The common theme I selected was darkness and emptiness, as the project focused on Liminal Space. I obtained many of the images from online sources featuring the urban legend known as The Backrooms.
Storyboard Animatic
The purpose of creating the animatic was to experiment and determine whether the ideas I had brainstormed fit together to form a cohesive narrative that fit into the horror genre.
Modelling Environment
Since my narrative was based on The Backrooms, my objective was to recreate the atmosphere it evoked. To accomplish this, I revisited my mood board to obtain a sense of the overall vibe and incorporated it into my environment design. Specifically, I created a maze-like environment consisting of large open spaces and numerous narrow hallways to create a sense of disorientation and the impression of an easy-to-get-lost-in area.
Texturing Environment
To maintain the element of Horror in my animation, I decided against using cartoony textures and opted for realistic textures instead. This was particularly important since my objective was to recreate the same look as The Backrooms, which necessitated the use of realistic textures. The walls in The Backrooms had a distinctive pattern, so I had to adjust the wall texture in Adobe Photoshop to make it seamless and rough in appearance. Additionally, I had to import some objects into Substance Painter to paint over them since I could not achieve their desired look using Maya alone.
Texturing Character
The texture of my character was done primarily using Substance Painter to ensure that it blended seamlessly with the realistic environment I had created earlier. It was important for me to maintain consistency in the horror theme, and using a different style for the character would have disrupted the overall tone of the animation.
Environment Renders
I rendered several frames, showcasing different sections of the finalised environment. These renders were used to gather feedback from lecturers, coursemates, and other individuals. The objective was to identify areas of success and areas for improvement.
Animating Character
Throughout most of the animation, the protagonist character is depicted walking to explore the maze-like environment. To save time, I created a walk-and-run cycle that I could easily reuse in different scenes. Since the character's walk-and-run cycles are continuously shown from different camera angles, I paid close attention to polishing them, making sure they appeared smooth and realistic.
To enhance the realism of my animation, I paid attention to small details that are often overlooked. One such detail was the character's breathing. I created a separate animation layer solely dedicated to animating the character's breathing cycle. This way, I could lock it and prevent any accidental changes while animating other body parts. The breathing animation added a subtle but crucial element to the character's movement and made the overall animation more lifelike.
Compositing Scenes using Playblasts
To ensure seamless transitions between scenes, I followed a workflow where I playblast each scene after completing it and imported it into Adobe Premiere Pro to evaluate its flow with the previous scene. If the transition was smooth, I would proceed with rendering the scene; otherwise, I would make necessary adjustments in Maya, such as modifying camera angles or start times, and repeat the process until I achieved the desired flow.
This workflow allowed me to avoid wasting time and resources on failed renders, as I could quickly assess whether the scenes flowed well together. Without playblasts, I would have to render the scenes before knowing if they fit together, resulting in potentially multiple renderings of the same scene and hindering my progress.
Post-Production Edits
For my final task, I focused on fine-tuning a few of the last render scenes, which required a specific appearance. My animation features many CCTV footage shots, similar to how the horror franchise Paranormal Activity uses them. To achieve the desired CCTV look, I imported some of my scenes into Adobe After Effects.
My primary objective was to remove the colors from the scene and add effects that created a grainy or noisy appearance. Additionally, I created a timecode to display the recording time of each scene. To ensure continuity, I carefully adjusted the timecodes from each CCTV scene to align with one another and show the right time. By paying attention to these details, I was able to create a cohesive and polished final product.