My thesis project is a short, 3D animated film about a hard boiled detective being tasked with investigating a cold case that the officials claim to be a suicide despite some hints of evidence pointing towards a dastardly murder. The film itself will open on the detective and their musings before leading into the conversation between the grizzled detective and the client. There will be special emphasis put on noire tropes, sci-fi scenery, and commentary on current events. I will be focusing more on the interior design and character design of the 3D models rather than the outside scenery. I aim for this project to be either a start of a new world building experience for a film or as a starting cinematic to a game, if I have the time and choose to go into the game elements, I will design a dialogue tree for a player to follow.
This project will involve the following: story boarding, script writing, voice acting, 3D Modelling, UV Mapping and Texturing. To create the 3D models of the two characters, the room, and any decoration the viewer will see, I will be using Blender which is a free equivalent to Maya Autodesk. I will also be applying the materials to the models within the program before exporting them to Unity where I will be doing more extensive animation work with the camera, lighting, and rigged 3D modelled characters. This will involve a lot of concept art before I begin the script or story boarding. My inspirations when thinking of the project were primarily Observer, L.A. Noire, and Call of Cthulhu all for their own specific reasons. I chose to look at Observer because I enjoyed the aesthetic concept of a dystopian sci-fi world where cybernetic enhancements were common but also exceptionally risky health wise. I chose to look at L.A. Noire and Call of Cthulhu because I believe the challenge of putting together a hard boiled detective with a dystopian sci-fi swing on the characters and setting will be interesting but overall achievable with enough forethought.
Personally, I have never seen any other type of media attempt this combination and any type of media that has will either come out during further research or come out while I am developing this project. I want to work on this short film because not only will it build my skills in 3D model production, but it will also help me better understand the intricacies of character development, animation, and audio production. These skills are some of the key skills I want to use in my further employment following graduation from College.