Ideas and Conceptualising
Creating the final project, I realized it would be no easy feat and that I should probably not work solo as I wanted to initially. I may not have my idea come out as intended due to time and only one pair of hands. So my classmate Joseph and I teamed up.
A lot of ideas and concepts would need to be put into consideration and we both had our own ideas. So we had to reach an idea that we’re both happy about. We instantly knew that we would want to work on a 3D project with a 2D look but the idea was quite hard to come by. We wrote down a number of titles and prompts and looked through imagery on Pinterest. And my idea of Lucifer’s downfall kind of intrigued us for a while.
Here are the mood boards for these ideas.
Here are a couple of my illustrations of a shot in the story and demon/ angel designs.
Joseph’s idea about a wizard exploring a ruin or cave and discovering a great evil, in the end, was also something we tried out. And I drew a few wizard designs.
Both of us weren’t entirely sure of each other’s stories so we went back to the drawing board. I thought it would be cool to have an animation on the preparation of a festival or ritual. So we bounced back and forth which led to cosmic horror, so we chatted about how we could possibly create a story around that. We thought of cultists in a church and a dark and moody atmosphere with some pops of color. Then I mentioned a figure in a yellow cloak, which reminded me of the old eldritch story about The Yellow King. We instantly clicked with the idea and decided to take some references and inspiration from the Yellow King book.
Here is the full mood board that we came up for this story.
We took plenty of inspiration from different spooky media like the movie The Witch, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Midsommar, Diablo 4 Lilith, Coraline to help us set the vibe. I gathered plenty of ideas for the characters and potential art styles to help me with my concepts of cultists, priestess and the Yellow King.
Concept Art
Yellow King
For the Eldritch horror at the centre of everything in this film I was inspired by The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers, which in turn inspired H.P Lovecraft’s work. So this film is almost like an homage to the start of cosmic horror. There is little real description of the Yellow King so every artist has their own interpretation of this being and so I gathered references from Pinterest and got to sketching. When thinking of lovecraftian horror the first thing that comes to mind is Cthulu, tentacles and eyes, so I drew the king in his signature robes with those elements as well as adding different adornments to make him feel more regal.
I wanted to depart a little from the shocking and gross horror of these beings and paint him in a more reverent light, as if that’s how the people see him. I made him stand tall and have metal details with crowns, crests and helmets but still have that sense of mystery to him with dark holes peeking in and slips of tentacles.
When sketches didn’t do it for me, I played around with a few silhouettes. Making him look more larvae-y and unnatural, or more of a concept with him being geometric shapes or even more humanoid. But Joseph and I ended up loving the 2nd last one. There was something very strong with that silhouette and the helmet as a crown worked really well.
I worked further on that concept and ended up with this version of him. Ornate details on the helmet with holes peeking into the unknown-ness that is he. His robes are patterned and I imagined them having moving shapes swirling around it to give that otherworldly feeling. As well as that, his tentacles come out of the robes like extra pieces of fabric but really thats just how his body is and it’s not actually a robe, it just looks like it.
Here’s an idea I drew up how he could be confronting the priestess at the end of the film in his own dimension. The words I want to explain it is unsettling, awe and terror-inspiring, all the feelings she is feeling when she gazes upon him.
We were thinking of doing a hybrid 3D and 2D film. So I decided to make the yellow king into a 2D asset that will be in the 3D scene, sort of like a painting. Again mirroring the idea he is not of this earth and his concepts of perception may be different. This also saves time on modelling an extra complex character. I created this final asset with full detail. I was going for the idea of the more you look at it the more things you find on his helmet, horrible things like faces, people, tentacles, eyes, hands. A big open mouth is uncanny to us, so I went full out for it with eyes inside the void, i tried to give him a semblance of a face but they could just be details, as the imitations of eyes have teeth etc. I gave him some shoulder pads for some more balance and visual interest. My idea was to add 3d cloth for the cloak for cool motions. I’m very happy with how freaky and different his design came out.
Priestess
The priestess was just a regular innocent woman that became a vessel for the King to lead the masses to him. This possession causes her to lose herself and be a shell of a person, not showing much emotion, almost dead-like. For references, I looked at pale people with striking dead blue eyes, interesting scars and veins showing, she had to be as cold and emotionless as possible. In this way she feels very powerful and calm and that is perfect for a leader.
I played around with different headpieces that reflect the king’s crown, and looked at some medieval clothing to help me get ideas. I tried making her seem shaman-ly almost as well and we ended up liking the 4th design. I really enjoyed her headdress and tassles, as well as the way the fabric draped on her, it made sense to me.
I coloured her in and was instantly in love. I wanted a dark but commanding look, with gold embellishments to show her importance in this church and set her apart. She has incense and a sacrificial knife on her side and jewellry on her hands.
The tutors mentioned she may look too dark in the 3D scenes and suggested to lighten her colours. So I added some washed-out yellow accents in the form of her neckpiece and headdress and made her outfit a lighter green. They also mentioned that she looked too pretty and that I should mess with her a bit to make her more unique and I did just that.
I gave her vertical yellow eyes to show the unnatural effects of the Yellow King’s aura and scars to show that she tried to claw her eyes when she saw glimpses of him. I also gave her a cleft lip for a unique touch. As for another touch, I thought a lace face mask would be cool on her. The tutors mentioned seeing her eyes throughout the movie would remove the effect that they have as this grotesque feature and recommended that I go with the lace mask idea.
During presentations, the priestess and king got good feedback from tutors and peers and we were also happy with their designs. In my opinion, she turned out almost exactly how I imagined her and I’m excited to create her in 3D.
Cultists
We can’t have a priestess with no cultists, so I also designed the cultists for consistency. Joseph already made mask designs and a couple concepts on the cultists and I built on them. I went for a more nomadic look with lots of adornments, a little more basic robed one, and a boxy wizard-y looking one. We weren’t happy with these quite yet so I designed one that was more kimono-style with a cool silk belt and written details and then another one to fit a colder climate with fur and cloves.
We ended up choosing the kimono-style one as our favourite for the main cultist, as it looks very sleek and fits the priestess more. The side cultists take inspiration from the last one but has the main cultist’s robes with no sleeves which saves time in creating extra 3D clothing.
Environments
Church
Our setting was a ruined desecrated church in the highlands with forests and fields of grass. Later I added a lake to reference the lake of the Yellow King’s dimension but more on that later. We went for an early dawn lighting situation, very calming and serene before everything spirals downwards. Dawn time also signifies the dawn of a new age in this story.
I went on a search for the type of scenery I was looking for in mainly Scotland and found some cool landscapes that I used as a reference. The autumn vistas in the show Sex Education were very beautiful and cinematic and I took inspiration from that.
The cultists have set up camp in the church grounds, so I had to add tents and campfires and lots of barrels.
The vibe in this concept is gorgeous and misty and what we want in this film.
I made this matte painting of the clouds for the 2D elements in the backgrounds, they have layers that I can control later.
This is me adding the lake and playing around with the colouring and lighting.
This is a more detailed version of this church grounds, I wanted to make it seem like it’s sinking into the lake. In our storyboards we wanted the sky to go yellow at the end and I was messing around with how that would look like, as well as other skies and lighting situations.
Joseph asked me for some concepts for the church interior for when he wanted to make the 3D models so I made a very rough photobash of it.
Yellow Dimension
In the book, Robert W. Chambers mentions a mysterious ancient city surrounded by the lake, Hali, and the sky is lit with twin suns and a black star-filled sky. The city is called Carcosa and it is home to Hastur, also known as the King in Yellow. With other stories from HP Lovecraft’s work, there have been many people who added to the lore and mentioned how Hastur will bend reality and merge parts of the Earth to the city and bring in unwilling people.
With all this information I thought it would be great to make the city as a mysterious silhouette rather than seeing it clearly, also saving me plenty of modelling time for a vast city. I was inspired by an old artwork of the city and wanted to make the city symmetrical, with it rising in levels reaching a peak. I played around with more alien looks and almost make it a huge body but then I remembered how it merges parts of Earth and I thought it would be cool to mix a bunch of architectural styles in one.
I tried to make the sky more like a concept and artistic with the silhouette of the city in front of the sun and the reflection in the lake. I messed around with a few more elements in the silhouette like an arch doorway but then removed it later as it wasn’t as opposing.
I added the twin suns and made them black, looking similar to black holes, since the rest of the stars are black. I placed my concept to see how the king would look in his environment and the tutors and I thought it would be better to have him be behind the city and silhouetted as well.
Storyboarding
When it came to storyboarding, we had a large challenge to make the story flow and be compelling. I wanted the beginning scene to be relaxing and calming, have a lot of ASMR-type sounds, to catch people off guard for what is to come, and start the film calm and end chaotically. So there were a lot of close-ups of the preparation of the ritual and nature, setting the mise en scene. I wanted a dramatic entrance from the priestess walking past all the cultists in the church, not revealing her face until after, the tutors suggested I unveil her way later to increase the impact of her disfigurements. We wanted the main cultist to snap out of his brainwashing and run away from the alter which makes the priestess attack him with her shadow that lengthens and shifts into shadowy tentacles.
As the weeks went by and we struggled as we kept coming back to the storyboards, we realised we haven’t really got a film yet. So we sat down and dedicated a day to write a script and I draw out the shots. We had the key moments and filled them in with scenes that made sense to us. After a long day we got something that flowed and we were happy enough with. This helped us set a goal of what we were working towards.
Animatic
With the animatic, I was very excited to put the shots together and add audio and timing to have a feel for the film. I am a very audio-visual person and seeing a version of a product helps me think of more ideas when I see it. I found sounds on free sounds and synced them up with the shots and I am very proud of how it flows and feels.
Previs
Joseph and I used placeholder 3D elements and rigs to help us get a more accurate feel of how the scenes will feel. Joseph made the blockout church grounds in Maya and thats where we animated the shots. We tried to match up the timings with the animatic so I didn’t have to change the sounds much and i think it made it a little more clear for showing it off in the presentations. I made the yellow dimension in unreal engine to have a first look at the potential of it.
Style Test
Joseph and I thought it would be cool to go for a stylised 3D painterly effect like arcane, so we got on to making our textures more painted in substance painter yet still sort of realistic. Joseph made the graves of the church grounds and I tried my hand at the foliage in the form of clovers. I think we achieved a desired effect with our assets.
I also tried my hand at the 2D elements in the 3D scene with opacity masks on planes. This saved a lot of performance and still looked very effective. I just used the sky texture from my concept and added a water texture on a plane.
I layered several planes for the city to give it a parallax movement when seeing it in a moving camera that isn’t looking at it straight on. I think I achieved the look i was going for for this test.
where this was more painted and whimsy, I turned the sphere to one of its poles and noticed a creepy vortex effect and
thought it might be a better fit for an eldritch horror.
Character Modelling
I was very excited to leave the more 2D side of things and finally model my priestess and see her fully realised. To save me time and stress, I used one of my older models of my original character and used her base mesh and face as a boost. I went into Blender and used the sculpt tool to warp her body to be more skinny and elongated, ribs portruding, to have an unnatural and unhealthy feel. For her face, I needed to redo most of it as her eyes were verticle and she didn’t really have eyelids. I also made her face shape overall nicer than the old model and sculpted the scars on her cheeks.
I retopo’d her to make her run better for rigging and animation, paying close attention to loops for nice deformations.
I had to model the feet from scratch as I didn’t have any before hand. And I hard surface modelled the headpiece.
I modelled some mock clothing on her just to get a feel for the model. I knew I wanted eyelashes with opacity masks so I added those here.
I brought in the basemesh and sculpted on top of it to get some details for a bake later on.
Rough details to the feet and teeth.
Texturing
For the painted texture I played about with some existing textures to give her some interest and on top of that, Joseph found an oil filter that helped us work on this more consistently.
Handpainting the face of the priestess to look more stylised.
Adding golden embellishments, shadows, changes in materials.
I used a brain pattern to tie in with the cerebral part of the king’s influence in messing you up. Since she is so pale I also gave her veins around her eyes to make it seem translucent.
Pretty much finished version of the Priestess’ textures. My tutor mentioned she would look better if she had more bloodshot eyes, so I added that later. I am so ecstatic of how she turned out and I haven’t even made the fabric yet.
Marvelous Designer
My tutor suggested we use Marvelous Designer to make the simulations for the clothing. I decided to give it a try and really enjoyed the workflow of making clothing in this program. It was a lot to learn but I got her cloth how I wanted it in a week of learning it with tutorials and trial and error. I needed to make her skirt, hood and cape.
I figured out that I needed to mess with the skin offset and tack the fabric on the avatar to help the clipping issues of the hood under headpiece. I kept messing with the hood because it wasn’t sitting like my concept did but in the end, I got it to sit right. I wanted her cloak to drape perfectly and dramatically drag behind her when shes walking down the aisle.
I textured the details to fit her base model but I made a mistake where I didn’t UV the cloth correctly so I unfortunately had to redo the textures.
In Unreal
This is the first time the priestess was placed into Unreal Engine and she looks fantastic. I am overjoyed how proportioned she is and her textures look awsome.
This is when I realised I needed to model the face lace as she is staring into your soul which is only effective for a short period of time, so we will save that for the end of the movie.
Rigging
Rigging was not an exciting prospect for me as I have struggled with it in placement year when creating a personal project. I talked to my tutor and he said I can rig the character with an autorigger if I do not want to focus on rigging for this project. I wanted to try it anyways but it got confusing and hard and I decided not to waste precious time on this. So I used a plugin called Advanced Skeleton. This is a nice rig that has many customizable parts and had great facial rigs, which appealed to me as the priestess may seem emotionless but she is only under the control until she is in the Yellow King’s dimension. That is where she laughs hysterically.
I tried setting up some extra bones on the side for the ropes but they kept breaking the rig so I decided to drop them. I found out about slider joints when perusing through the options and noticed they made very natural deformations for elbows, wrists and knees. This is me testing out the slider joints.
I had severe issues with the skin cage of the model, which helped to distribute the weights for skinning. I had to figure out how to make the tassles in the skin cage smaller and I did. I weighted the body rig and was happy with the deformations until another issue arose and the rig broke. I remade it quicker this time as I remembered the steps from the Advanced skeleton tutorial playlist on youtube.
This is the issue that happened. The high poly face couldn’t be deleted and messed with the whole rig.
When it came to the face rig, I thought it would be quite easy. It was not. The mirror joints tool did not work, the lips and eye sockets didn’t react when setting the points. Disaster! Days went by with this issue and I was considering one of my tutors to help me make the rig after making this rig for 2 weeks. But I prevailed and messed around with maya settings and fixed up my face model and it finally worked. Advanced skeleton did not like the way the eyes were so the default animation face test did not work on it. But i was fine with this as it was bespoke and id have to work with the eyes a different way than usual eyes. I was very proud of myself with finally having a rig done for the priestess, a thing I have never done successfully on my own before.
Silly facial poses I made to treat myself for the hard work done and testing at the same time.
Assets for scene
For the church it was mostly Joseph making it. He made the base walls and windows as well as the outwards pillars. I made the more detailed inner pillars, using the same design elements that he used on the details to save time and keep it consistent. I scaled and changed about the walls and pillars to make the altar room.
I wanted a cool stone staircase with gothic railings, while still using Joseph’s detail elemtents. I used separate bricks to make the steps themselves.
I also made the arches at the top of the church along with the dome of the altar room.
This is everything put together so far.
I made the fountain with separate bricks for more details and used a base mesh from Maya content browser to build from. All to save more time. I gave her a dress and hood and removed her head for the creepy darkness under the hood.
We have a side building in the blockout and so I made the ruins of it.
I textured it with Josephs church textures and layers some extra colour and damage as well as ivy for more detail before its covered up with tree models.
Props
We needed a scroll to tell the viewer about the story in the form of a ritual scroll. It’s a collapsable scroll that makes a metal cylinder when closed.
I thought about animating it, and one of my tutors showed me some ways on how to rig it. But I ended up not animating it as we decided to cut out that part.
Here is the ritual I drew out in procreate. Our inspiration was the tapestry at the start of midsummer explaining the events of the film before they happen artistically.
I was going with an ancient text written in blood. This is probably how the priestess got possessed in the first place.
We went from not wanting a sword to magic to going back to the sword idea for more interest and weight. So we decided to have the ceremonial sword to stab the cultist. I looked at several concepts from Joesph on the swords and took inspiration from them. He was preoccupied with another portion of the project and I needed it for animation so I made it with some extra touches from me.
The sword had to be large and adorned, yet have a gothic and more unique shape. I was thinking maybe something simple with golden metal rays of light or a normal handle that kind of looks like an eye. But then saw a piece of art that inspired me to give a bunch of metallic tentacles to the sword and bandages with eldritch eyes on the hilt.
I tried different textures and colours and ended up making it yellow/gold as we didnt have much pop of yellow in the church scene.
Creepy eldritch eyes. And the yellow king designed on the blade. With some runes on the handle.
Im quite happy with how it turned out
Unreal Scene Layout
I was very excited to make the scene in unreal as I love to set up landscapes and scenery and make them tell a story. This ended up being a lot of work for me in the end but I enjoyed it while i was making it. I used ultra dynamic sky, a brilliant sky plugin i have plenty of experience from before and lots of assets from megascans to help fill out the scene. And the trees came from the alder collection in the unreal marketplace. I made my own grass and set it up to move and sway in the wind and placed it all around with some colour variation. I thought about composition and how my concepts looked and tried to make it look really cool. I placed the church in and it already looked impressive without textures.
This is how the scene slowly became more and more detailed.
I gave it a dark moody blue tint with fog and added a 2D cloud to give a quirk to the landscape. I also made the carpet and set out the models to see how they look in the scene.
Very happy with how it’s turning out. Added the graveyard.
Joseph’s portal model turned out stunning, he used my art of the portal to help make the stain glass frame and it looks really imposing but beautiful.
My side building.
I added drawings of a forest to use as a backdrop for distant trees and you can’t tell the difference with the fog. It has really filled in the background with details but is not distracting.
I added the settlement that the cultists have made, to make it look lived in, I filled it with clutter. I used assets from megascans to do this and put around a crumbled stone wall and gates around the grounds.
I used fog sheets from a gothic church pack.
The scene looked a little too pretty and calming, I still wanted that but also give it a horror vibe with thick fog and I believe it looks much better.
Carcosa
The yellow dimension was pretty much set when I first made it, I just needed to figure out the task of the sky being alive and visually striking. I used the base texture of the sky from my concept art and began messing with nodes. One of my tutors showed me a couple nodes and parameters you can mess with and my mind instantly sparked and I began layering many different textures on each other.
This gave a sun flare vibe but it looked a little empty still.
I added caustic effects I made to give it the feeling of water reflections but it wasnt enough.
These effects were fun but they didnt look the best.
When I brought in a swirling texture and perlin noise, mixed with the caustics. It began shaping into a more alive looking sky.
After a lot of fidgeting about it and having a large number of settings, it ended up looking absolutely stunning. Very oily and creepy but at the same time, the starry night painting and huge rays of sun. I added the second sun into the same frame of the city and it instantly looked better too. I am beyond happy with how it turned out.
Animation
I was excited to bring the characters to life and so I started with the priestess’ walk cycle. This way I can reuse her walk through the church aisle. I looked at several references but they just didn’t help me that much, so I was suggested to look at the animation guide of the walk and it began helping me with the block out and she began flowing much better. I was going for a regal walk but also reverent and I ended up being quite happy with it. I later change her hands to hold the sword.
I reused the walk cycle to make her walk in another scene with different hand movements and it worked so well.
This was the very first 3D render of the priestess and I was very happy with it then but she made a lot of progress since. I tried to keep her expressions subtle but realistic and facial animation is honestly one of my favourite things while animating.
The turn animation before and after being imported in unreal and simulated the cloth.
The first kill animation pass. I was given notes that not enough weight was being felt, so i retouched it and it looks so much better in the final version,
The first pass of this looked cool but again I got notes on the sword being weightless and I tried to fix that.
Time was running out and we needed her stabbing the sword into the portal and i whipped it up quickly.
This shot was also made very quickly due to the time frame but the final shot in the film of it is awsome in my opinion.
The laughing animation was scary to do as I needed her to look like shes feeling all emotions at once and not look too silly, and with a few notes I think I improved her a lot. I took inspiration from the end of Midsommar for this animation.
I thought about continuity with most of my animations and I think I achieved it mostly.
A few scrapped animations
they didn’t make the cut
Simulations
The simulations were working smoothly most of the time for marvelous however a couple times they were really messed up and needed a lot of tweaking to work. For example the laughter scene she is supposed to have her fabric flowing like water to give that otherworldyness. But it was a challenge to make it look right. After a lot of tweaking it worked.
too fast
not right
not right
perfect
The laughing part had many issues with clipping on her head that mostly got fixed in the end but it was a source of great frustration.
The big Issue
When it came to rendering, my scene for the church ended up being super heavy that no computer that I tested could render it. It would crash at every setting that I changed and even had help from my tutor to find a fix. Since the scene still looked nice in the viewport I ended up screen recording the church scenes, but was able to render out the scenes in the Carcosa, cultist at the start and priestess at the start. I was given an idea of why I can’t render it and I will try after submission as my time ran out.
Reflection
This project was a joy to work at, I got to work with a wonderful teammate who communicated really well with me and we bounced off each other with ideas. I got to create an awsome movie that looked great, fit my vibe and my love of cosmic horror. I got to challenge myself with giving every bit of artistic and technical knowledge I have to this project and learned a lot more about Unreal Engine than I did before and also the pipeline. I learned that things take a lot more time than before thought and that proper planning needs to be done for this, as I learned with the rendering issue, cloth sim, animations, different new programs and plugins etc. This has been an incredibly rewarding experience and I am satisfied with the film for submission.