SIGNAL
Year: 2025
Client: Graduation Project
Roles: 3D Modeller, 3D Animator, Texturing, 2D Animator, Sound designer
Software: Cinema4D, Redshift, After Effects
Signal was my submission for my final school project at Hyper Island, we were given three months to create a short film based on the theme of misunderstanding and understanding so i wanted to combine that with my love for sci-fi and horror. This landed me on a short story about a tiny robot getting activaded by a mysterious signal from something within a facility. I decided to really push my limits with this one, and that’s how Signal came to life. With this project, I wanted to explore all the areas of 3D, from modeling and animating to lighting, texturing, and even some 2D animation for the screens.
This was basically the process I used for world-building the different rooms. I started with just building the rooms with various assets i kitbashed and then creating a basic lighting, then tweaked or removed some of it along the way to better match the darker atmosphere I was aiming for. After that, I moved on to texturing and fixing imperfections to make everything look more natural and realistic. I also added various objects to help the rooms feel more alive and believable after i placed my camera down to more narrow the focus of the viewers.
Funnily enough, the robot actually came about pretty late in the process, even though it ended up playing such a major role in the project. At first, its body was more of a sphere shape, but as I worked more on the environment and atmosphere, it just didn’t feel like the right fit. I eventually went with a more square design to give it a more industrial look.
One big challenge I ran into was figuring out how the robot could show emotion with just one eye. I tried a few different ideas—like a simple sphere eye and even a more aggressive-looking one—but neither really worked or conveyed much feeling. Then, after rewatching Wall-E and seeing how they used screens to show emotion, I got inspired to do the same. In the end, I went with a simple screen for the eye. Sometimes, simple really is the better option.
Credits:
I want to give a huge thank you to my mentor for this project, Nabil (Nanoid), for overseeing the process and providing valuable feedback and input that really helped me improve the final outcome.
also a big thanks to my classmates George and Johannes for keeping me company during all those late-night work sessions, and for keeping me from slowly losing my mind in the process.
Assets used in the project:
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/sci-fi-hallway-assetpack-free-too-783450ff49c94409939925f2ca677222
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/blockout-sci-fi-console-81320e6817bc4ea0b888f7e266d98a50