3D animation by Wen-Yueh (Winnie) Chen. 2 minutes 11 seconds. 2021. Audio: Space Noise by Martin Klem.
Inspired by the ephemeral beauty of botanical forms, I created hybrid “animals” encased in an ambiguous, fish tank-like environment. These simulated creatures live forever in the digital space, as projections of Human’s desire to possess curious beings, as well as man-made aestheticizations of nature that lurk between the ethical boundary of imagination and reality.
This project is the third iteration of the Sacred Monstrosity series ( I, II ). I sculpted every botanical element with Forger, then created displacement maps for each part using ZBrush. Applying displacement maps allowed me to animate the creatures in their simplified forms (with reduced poly-count) without sacrificing the details shown in rendered images. Finally, I assembled all the parts in Maya and produced animations with deformers, and rendered with Arnold Renderer.
