ordinary souvenir
Our days are filled with normality. However, some things just create an impression on us. These events last for some time in our memory before being replaced by those that create an even greater impression or is of greater importance. But no matter how it is, we carry that memory and just like a souvenir we get from our trip, the impression we have serve as the remembrance of time we spent throughout normality.
ordinary souvenir recreates some of these ordinary, uninteresting and easily forgettable events that I experienced and presents them in a souvenir ball. (To be honest, it is quite difficult to remember about exactly what these events are without revisiting the project by the time I am writing this page).
How this little art project works: User needs the VR Controller as well as VR Glasses. As the user enter the VR scene, an empty blue world with a word pause appears. The user is actually in a souvenir ball with particles that serves as snow. There is nothing much in this state but the user can trigger the next state by shaking one of the VR Controllers. As the VR Controller moves up and down and rotates, so does the souvenir ball where the user is in. The Skybox also change from blue with "PAUSE" to "REWIND" with some images circulating the souvenir ball. When it is triggered enough a word "PLAY" will appear for a while, the whole events are played from timelines 1 to 10. The particle changes its movement as the ball is rotated.
Events breakdown To me events that give a lasting impression are those with memorable conversations. There are 3 such events in ordinary souvenir: 1. Conversations of 2 persons who are making jokes about chicken dinner while another stranger seems to be anxious. (Split into timelines 1, 8, and 10) 2. Conversation with a friend in a train to Weimar about summer (Split into timeline 2 and 3) 3. Conversation about the concert and demonstration that happened in Apolda during summer this year. (Split into timelines 4, 9, 5)
Everything that is seen in runtime are parts of 3 aforementioned events which are split into several timelines (refer to Unity timelines) each. All these timelines starts when it is triggered and runs in unordered manner. Meaning, part of one event will be followed by part of other event instead of completing a whole event. As the scene goes on the each of the timelines will be played and they turn stranger. The sequence ends with timeline 6 and 7 that mix up parts of other events.
I break the events down like this to represent that sometimes it is difficult to remember a certain event with total certainty and without any influence of other events and our own impression at the time.
About the starting blue world and pause/rewind/play word Blue world and pause/rewind/play word are an attempt to insert an movie element in the scene. Realizing that I used blueish lighting to give the idea of water in the souvenir ball and the events are shown like series of movie clips, I can't help myself to put a VHS like blue screen with pause/rewind/play queues.
Animation and 3D Models used: Animations on the 3D Models are done with the help of MIXAMO. All the 3D Models are royalty free model that I found internet with some modification using Blender to reduce the number of polygons. For a non humanoid, I had to take an extra step to manually rig the model to allows MIXAMO to animate these model like a proper humanoid
Attribution Animation: https://www.mixamo.com Music: "DIE FEEN" by Mirco Oswald Roast Chicken Model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/roast-chicken-biped-7c7ec0eadffb4484a7e3830c4d581232 Human Model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/downloadable-male-bash-mesh-dddc0c77bc5a4483a46f27b1ccc2facc Softdrink Can Model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/monster-energy-drink-d9e8651b357e4b11909ae305024e1d37
You can find this complete project here: https://github.com/mapoto/THE_WEIRD.ordinary-souvenir Pinguin Model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/low-poly-penguin-2447f7535657403f8b99256638d011e5