Horror Sequence

As you might know by now, I am very much inspired to create based on the time of year and theme that might be most present. For this project, it was close to Halloween, and I had been watching many Horror films. When watching these films, the one thing that really inspired me was how they used a combination of audio and visuals to create a suspenseful feeling. I wanted to create something that incorporated these elements. At the time I was quite new to Blender, and I wanted to give myself a project to work on that involved sculpting.

The Dark One Horror Sequence Final

This is the final outcome from the personal project, the programmes used to make this was Blender and Premier Pro. Blender was used to create the demon model along with camera movement, lighting and environments. Premier Pro was used to add effects, noise and other to amplify the visuals. Overall, I believe that the outcome achieved the effect that I was going for. The use of lighting, camera movement and noise all worked to achieve a suspenseful short clip incorporated themes and elements from Horror films.

The Dark One character

I made the model using a 3D modelling software called Blender. When making this, I was still quite new to Blender but wanted a project to explore the sculpting side of the program.

Although I cannot provide screenshots of the sculpting process, as I didn’t record the steps, the model started off as a basic low poly Ico sphere, I added geometry and reshaped the sphere until it looked the way I wanted. The last addition of geometry was the nose, once this was added the base of the face was made. When making changes to the model, I repeatedly remeshed the voxel size of the model to prevent the faces stretching and losing model detail and quality. This process allows you to remesh the current shape and add in new faces all over the model which allows more detail. Remeshing does make the model lose quality and sharpness, but to counter this I used the smooth tool to get quality back into the model and brush over the details I had added prior to the remesh.

When I was making The Dark One character, I was trying to achieve one thing, and that was to make him look as scary as possible. I prioritized making features of his face abnormal, to make it recognisable as a face but one that was completely off. I did this because I heard human beings naturally fear things that look human but aren't, this toys with a natural fear. The two things that I believe really sell the character's fear factor is the mouth and eyes, especially in the rendered version. Both features truly separate my character between a human being and a demon, the freakishly large mouth paired with the soulless dark eyes depict a character with dark intentions and pure evil and would scare anyone who is unfortunate to meet him in a dark alley way.

Referring to references

When I was modelling The Dark One, at no point had I drawn out the design I was going to make, it just started as an idea of a project I wanted to create and the type of character I wanted to make and focus on. Instead of using concept drawings, I used characters from horror films I had watched to inspire me. Films such as the Insidious series, Host and the Exorcist Series all offered the most inspiration when I was working my project. In Insidious, the red faced demon who features in most of the series inspired the colouring and disturbing look of my character, where as the character Pazuzu, who features in the Exorcist series has freaky eyes which directly inspired my characters eyes. Both of these characters were referred to, to develop my character. Where as Host, which is a Shudder film made using Zoom during the pandemic inspired me specifically by the endings use of anticipation, this is done by using the flash of a camera to light up a corridor briefly while the characters are moving down it, the audience knows that something is coming but not when. This directly inspired me to randomly shine light on my characters face as the camera gets closer to show the viewer that the face is getting closer and give a feeling of anticipation and dread.

Generally speaking, my creative process is more instinctive than a process like concept art and storyboards, when I have a vision of something I want to make, I make it.

Rendered vs Unrendered

Unrendered

No Materials or Textures

Unrendered

With Materials and Textures

Rendered

With Materials and Textures

The difference between the not rendered and rendered is obvious, but comparing them side to side shows how much of a difference lighting can make to a scene. They are clearly the same character, but decreasing the visibility of the character and submerging him in darkness really enhances the horror factor of his face.

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