Oddity Productions- Portrait of a Universe (IN POST-PRODUCTION)

Unreal Technical Director / Virtual Art Lead

Final Environments

I absolutely loved working on this project, and remains one of my favorites to date. Since this story is about an intergalactic artist, I was given a lot of creative room on the environments. But I was also working under the director, so as much freedom as I had, it was also my responsibility to make every scene match his creative vision. It took a lot of idea pitching and thorough communication, but the final environments left us both in awe when shooting day came and they appeared on the big screen. Since the story follows an artist, I gave each environment, while starkly different, that same dreamy feel. Each world feels like it could have been created with brush strokes. The forest world appears in the film less as a physical place, and more as a memory, or a place from the artist’s past. Because of this, I wanted to make it feel painted. I added red, yellow, and blue grass onto the ground, and created a shader which added red, yellow, and blue streaks across the tree trunks and rocks and other foliage. I also created a special shader for the background. This shader uses a render camera of the forest and distorts the image heavily. That way, when you moved around the environment, the background would move in perspective, but you would be unable to fully distinguish individual shapes. I did this to add to the imagery of a memory: fuzzy around the edges, with only the really prominent details fully in focus.

Environment Iteration Design