For our final animation for the Advanced 3D Imaging and Animation class at Uni, we had to create a short animation with a narrative that did not include any characters.

At first, this was a fairly withering task as when you first think of a narrative or an idea for an animated story you initially think of all these cool concepts that involve characters. The main reason we had to create it like this was because there simply wasn’t enough time left in the semester to go thoroughly go over character modeling and animation, let alone time to actually animate it along with all the other projects we had to do. Unfortunate, really.

So the approach I took was representing the transition or cross over from death to life. Correctly named, Rebirth, it’s an abstract representation of what is happening in someone’s mind right before death. Main symbolism in the piece being the daffodil which represents life or rebirth. I used electronic blips and beeps to represent hospital life support along with heavy breathing and a variation of what is suppose to be inner monologue of audible memories as well as actual spoken word in the subject’s location.

All the 3D animation was created in Maya 2009 and rendered out in Mental Ray. It was then composed in Adobe Premiere with sounds sourced from Flashkit and royalty free stock footage from various locations on the internet for the flashing overlays, which are meant to represent flash backs or memory glitches. The song, which contains most of the male voice audio, is Zoetrope Trailer by Lustmord.

I quite enjoy the unison between the dark feel of the audio combined with the light and beautiful scene that is created visually. I feel that is illustrates both the fear of the unknown with death but also the beauty of life itself and the creation of which.