Uncanny Gallery Making Of Final

The Uncanny Gallery 2

Introduction Having researched the uncanny in great detail for my dissertation, I decided to put the theory into practice for my final project at the University for the Creative Arts. Inspired by Ersnt Jentsch and Sigmund Freud’s essay’s, the aim for this project was to create a short animation that explores the nature of the uncanny. This book presents the research, decision making, creative process and technical skills that went into creating an animated short designed to create a sense of unease for the audience. Welcome to “The Uncanny Gallery”…..

What is the Uncanny?

The uncanny is shrouded in ambiguity. It is a strange, mysterious and unsettling feeling that someone experiences due to an object, person or environment. It is often associated with the supernatural, but it is not exclusive to it. In his 1906 essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny”, Ernst Jentsch surmised that the uncanny arises in cases of intellectual uncertainty. The better orientated a person is in their environment, the less likely they are to have an uncanny response. He identified specific situations when it is most likely to occur, stating that wax figurines and early robots known as automata, evoke the emotion as they make the viewer question if they are really alive or not.

Sigmund Freud expanded on this research in his 1919 essay “The Uncanny”. Although Freud did not accept that uncertainty was the primary source of the uncanny, it never the less recurs in his own study. Freud did agree that the emotion occurs when people view wax figures, robots and other inanimate objects that appear to be animate. To explain why he turned to etymology and the origin of the word “uncanny”, discovering a curious relationship with its base word “canny”, in the German language…


UNHEIMLICHE

German Adjective – Uncanny: Un-homely, creepy, eerie, mysterious, strange, foreign


HEIMLICHE

German Adjective – Canny: homely, friendly, pleasant, normal, familiar, domestic



Freud’s concept of the uncanny suggests the feeling arises in an instance where something can be both familiar yet alien at the same time. This creates a cognitive dissonance within the individual and leads to an outright rejection of the object, person or environment. With all of this information the concept of developing a computer generated environment inhabited by uncanny objects was born. An early idea was to design a maze with separate rooms dedicated to one aspect of the uncanny.


Freud’s theory had a significant effect in the world of art, influencing the Surrealist movement and their depictions of the peculiar and strange. I did some more research into contemporary uncanny art for further inspiration for my themed rooms. From here my concept evolved. The research led me to art galleries and exhibitions with tangible, uncanny themed objects created by artists experimenting with a range of materials. This influenced me to adapt my idea and create my own digital exhibition. However, instead of creating a digital environment, I decided to insert digital, uncanny objects into a real world setting. This meant I would need to scout a location to film live footage.


I needed a location that was readily available and large enough to accommodate my uncanny objects. I thought of my local village hall which was available to hire. I scouted the location taking pictures and video footage with a camcorder. This location was ideal. The thought of a community venue inhabited by strange objects lends itself to the uncanny.


With a location secured, I began sketching some initial ideas. The idea was to produce three exhibits, with strange, organic and lifelike properties. This helped me establish where they would be placed and the sense of scale the objects should be. I took inspiration from different sources including the insect world, the microscopic world, human anatomy and sea life amongst others.




After reviewing the sketches I chose three to develop further and produced some concept art. I chose a scaled up version of a skin cross section with large hairs that could move and sway as if they were reacting to the environment; a super sized cell with a translucent membrane and dividing cells at the centre; and finally a disembodied belly with patches of hair that would expand and contract as if it was breathing.


To give myself a better idea of what the final piece would like, I developed an animatic. This involved modelling simple representations of the environment and the objects in the scene. I could then animate them with linear deformers and recreate the sort of camera movements I would be capturing on the day of the shoot.


After discussing the concept images with my colleagues and peers, the idea was tweaked again. I decided that the skin cross section and super sized cell were more suited to a science exhibit and wouldn’t convey a sense of the uncanny. So I adapted the idea of the disembodied belly and imagined it as a female presence, surrounded by smaller objects that could be interpreted as its offspring. I then thought about having two larger masses that could be the parents surrounded by their children.



I then explored the possibility of adding more human features to the parent figures. Upon reflection I decided the previous version was a more subtle approach. I continued to produce some more concept art experimenting with the positions of the objects after choosing my favourite depictions of the offspring.



I then adapted the animatic to accommodate the new layout and establish how the parents and children will move in the final scene.


Next came the day of the shoot which would be divided into two parts. The first was dedicated to capturing images of a chrome sphere to create a HDR photo which could then be used as an image based lighting system. This would eventually be used to recreate the lighting and reflections in the 3D scene to make it look like the digital objects are actually in there. The diagram below demonstrates the setup used to achieve this.


To create the HDR image, I took seven pictures of the chrome sphere, adjusting the shutter speed with each shot to under and over expose the image accordingly. We will return to the next stage of this process later.


The next part of the shoot involved setting up the hall to capture the live footage which will serve as the back plate. I covered the floor and walls with reference markers to assist with motion tracking the scene and establish where the uncanny objects will be placed.


With all of the footage captured, I began to setup the scene in Autodesk Maya. I had to recreate parts of the environment that the uncanny objects would interact with, such as the floor and rear wall. I attached a “use background” shader to this geometry which would receive the shadows cast by the uncanny objects as if they were in the scene.


The next stage I unwrapped the HDR image of the chrome sphere from earlier and painted out unwanted, blemishes, shadows and reflections. I imported the resulting image into my scene which created a dome image around the geometry.


I then created some simple geometry and placed them in the scene roughly where the uncanny objects would be placed. I then produced a test render to test the shadows and reflectivity generated by the image based lighting system.


Next I began to model the uncanny objects. I began by box modelling, adding geometry and adjusting the vertices to reach the desired effect. I then UV mapped the object to ensure the face normals are the correct way around for the fur system.


Next I duplicated the geometry to create a blendshape as a control to animate the object breathing. I used the lattice deformer to expand the geometry out and forward to represent the belly inhaling. Then I added the blendshape to the original geometry and created an extra control in the attribute editor for greater control when it comes to animating it.


Then I attached a fur description to the geometry and adjusted the settings to suit my needs. The final stage was adding the skin texture using maya’s mental ray based fast skin shader. This node was particularly useful as the standard settings gives the geometry a waxy look. I made minor adjustments to this shader as I felt it added a sense of realism, giving the impression that it was actually cast from wax or silicon by an artist.


I completed a test render of the object and imported it into the environment scene. I repeated this process with the other uncanny objects and then animated the final scene. I then rendered a beauty and occlusion pass and composited the images to create the final piece.


Beauty Pass

Occlusion Pass


FINAL COMPOSITION

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Uncanny Gallery Making Of Final