Mayfly

After getting feedback from one of the lecturers, we’ve come to an agreement to scrap the Mayfly nymph model I created months prior as it did not look appealing and didn’t dapple into my research question regarding abstraction.

Instead I’ve opted for a more simplified form which was achieved with Maya Mash – an extremely powerful tool. The water was created in Maya Boss.

I had to render this three different times – first time because I was not happy with the lack of depth of field and the colour palette as it did not match the rest of my animation, and second due to a glitch in the scene where one of the spheres became stuck in one spot. To fix this, I had to change the volume and how much the spheres spread. This issue is still present in the final render of this scene, however it is less noticeable as the spheres converge in the center at the very end.

Achieving the correct depth of field was a task of difficulty – I could not understand why the render was either very blurry or there was close to no depth of field. It wasn’t until I consulted a classmate where he advised to pull the camera back and zoom in the the focal length instead of physically moving the camera closer to the spheres.

It was difficult to decide on the combination of colours therefore I test rendered a couple of frames.

Stage of the Egg

Mayflies lay their eggs on the water surface which then sink to the base of the river bed.

This was done in Cineba 4D using mograph cloner and shader effector to attain the randomized wave of eggs. The water is just a shader applied onto a displaced plane. Because all the materials are transparent the render took 30 minutes per frame as I had to increase the samples or else it turned out grainy.

The Mayfly

I feel like the mayfly deserves a post of its own considering the amount of time spent on the modelling and texturing and crashing.

Initially the mayfly was going to be transparent in a way that it was rendered in wire frame mode – however it looked very messy when it moved and had no wow factor. Thherefore, the overall texture changed to plain glass – but again when paired with a light sky background, visibility became an issue.

A friend then suggested putting pusling organs inside the body like glass frogs:

And looking at other transparent animals – I managed to create an abstract mayfly.

Now the issue was my inability to create the signature hair on the tail of the Mayfly. Xgen in Maya kept crashing whenever I saved the file or changed any aspect too drastic. The only way to confidently create hair was in C4D – the issue was the incompatability of the files exported from the two programs. However after a lot of back and forth and multiple crashes and failures, exporting the files as and alembic cache allowed the files to be transported betweent the two programs – only downside being once transported back into Maya, the animation becomes baked thus rendering it unchangable.

Mayfly Nymph rendered in C4D as hair cannot be exported as an alembic.

After figuring out the method to share files between the two programs, I was able to create a pulsing heart in C4D and bring it back to the rigged mayfly in Maya before animating it and bringing it back to C4D to apply the hair with realworld physics and proceedural animation, then lastly bringing it into Maya to texture and render in redshift.

Tinted glass with pulsing copper organs – Redshift, Maya

Simulations and Styleframes

Test render of an abstract bird – body is hidden and just the feather simulation is rendered in cinema 4D. The only issue being the lack of clarity of it being a bird – legs and wings can be added to ensure the idea gets across.

The transition before a spring like frog appears. Once the soft paste ends, the frog will jump from the toothpaste looking mess.

Since it is an abstract animation, there was the idea to make the water absract too, however it would look much better if there was an actual water simulation. Since I cannot create water simulations in C4D, it must be done in Maya which is shown above following a tutorial on youtube.

The image above represents the egg hatching. Though insect eggs don’t crack like egg shells – the focus is more on the concept rather than accuracy.

The shedding of skin – nymph stages and nymph to a winged mayfly.

Mayflies

Life cycle of the mayfly Cloeon dipterum (Photoshop from several scanned pencil drawings; Redrawn and arranged in photoshop)

The existence of a Mayfly is fleeting, romantic and sad with the lifespan of a maximim 24 hours.

They have four main stages: egg, nymph, subimago and imago(adult).

The eggs are deposited onto the riverbed and gestate for around 2 weeks.

The nymph stage is the longest – ranging from a few weeks to 2 years. The reason for being the amount of growth the Mayfly nymph goes through by shedding its skin multiple times – all in the while risking predation from fish, amphibians and other water insects. In the final stage of being a nymph, it swims to the water’s surface and sheds its skin again before emerging with its first wings.

The Mayfly is the only insect that develops wings twice. Once it enters the subimago stage it can no longer feed – its primary goal being to grow once more and then mate. the Mayfly subimago appears smaller and duller than the imago with a shorter tail. It finds shelter and sheds one last time to emerge as an adult.

Once in adulthood (subimago stage) it flies off to mate before it dies in the next 24 hours. It attracts females by dancing on the water surface. Once the mating is complete, the female lays their eggs above the water and dies.

Rough Story Board

Here we have established a colour palette and visual style. Blues and fluid simulations represents water and river bed where Mayflies emerge from. The green represents plants and the gold – which will appear orange in some scenes – represents the Mayflies themselves. Simplifying colour allows the viewer to focus more on the narrative and motion.

Moving forward

After regretably wasting half a year on an idea that has gone to waste, we are finally moving forward with the Mayfly project and thus the thesis is reformed : Mayfly is a short documentary of the Mayfly’s lifecycle purely depicted through abstract 3D animation which explores how a short film of purely abstract simulation can create a cohesive and comprehensive narrative and form a deep relationship with the viewer without recognisable forms.

This project explores the world of abstract imagery and while the main concept of the short film illustrates the lifecycle of a Mayfly, there is room for personal interpretation thus also exploring the complex relationship between the viewer and the screen in hopes to create a different cinematic experience. I have always been interested in the more abstract arts and the concept of environmentalism which explains the choice behind my research. The choice to purely use abstract imagery provides a larger boundary of exploration, however creates the difficulty of creating a concise narrative as an artefact of this practice based project. Maxim Zhestkov and Matt Frodsham who predominantly work with abstract animation are wonderful in a sense that they leave a lasting impression with such minimal and nonfigurative imagery. The creation of abstract simulation requires a slightly different workflow compared to that of a character based 3D animation which enabled me to create a pipeline that worked best with the way I operate.

Using the same artist inspiration but seeing it in a different light – Maxim Zhestkov -Elements (Black and white) & Matt Frodsham – 30sec of Sound (Orange).

Maxim Zhestkov has a range of work that is simple yet so emotive – he primarily uses spheres and has a distinctive visual style. Each of his work are similar to one another as they use the same techniques and assets – not necessarily recycled as each are stitched together in a different order of sequence and conveys a different vibe.

Differing from Zhestkov, Matt Frodsham uses a bright colour palette and conveys his work in a brighter mood/more psychedelic. 30 Seconds of Sound is a collaboration between motion designers and sound designer Simon Pyke. The work discussed is the abstract piece created Frodsham who has animated his 3D models according to sound. He has a very specific pastel colour palette and modern style of modelling that is consistent within majority of his works. This short film explores the power of sound and motion. When these aspects are separate, there is less impact on the viewer. The transition of each scene also contributes to different ways of comprehension – especially when a pool of calm waves was juxtaposed with an abrupt explosion of coral forms and gelatinous organic growth.

New Moodboard:

We can already see how much clearer things are compared to the last project – with a clear direction of how each asset will appear and each stage of the Mayfly lifecycle.

Failure and Changes

In regards to what made my initial idea fail was the lack of direction the project was going in – the boundary for exploration was too vast that no coherent narrative was formed. When each scene was juxtaposed there was no coherent link between each – it at most of the time seemed random and purely for aesthetic reasons, thus I had to really lock down a clear narrative and not just base the entire project on the vague concept of environmentalism. This was not to say the previously created simulations was now deemed useless – the skill and knowledge gained from those tests aided me in creating something more original by combining the different techniques.

Though even now, some aspects don’t link together, I have found a way to have a repeating occurrence in each scene – the aspect of a wing and a long thread/tail and fluttering motion which represents the mayfly. And, instead of having a different textured background, instead have a background which is out of focus but obviously consistent in to show that the story is all contained in the same physical environment.

In a sense my project seems too simplified – no wow factor – therefore I was advised to input more complex/difficult simulations such as water simulation. Initially I represented water through spline animation and abstract streams of colour – however thought it can be translated as a concept of a flowing river when paired with sound – on its own it is not strong enough/complex enough. The only issue being my main plan to solely create my entire project in cinema 4D can no longer be achieved as the student version does not include the water simulating option – therefore I will create some aspects in Maya instead.

After this change in direction – I am much more attached to my project as there is a clearer direction I am heading in and ideas are finally coming together – a tad too late but things are working better than they were nonetheless.

Firstly

Much has changed since this idea came to fruition. Initially, the idea revolved around the concept of environmentalism – the story of a home destroyed by pollution and disasters.

The establishment colour and visual style for this project was somewhere between the two mood boards shown below. While both were strongly abstract and minimal they differed in terms of mood – one seeminly more haunting and sombr while the other appears more appealing. With these ideas in mind I decided to use the more colourful palette to show the world before pollution and human intervention whereas the monochromatic and alien-like mood board is more suited for the aftermath of the disasters.