For this assignment, I had two ideas. The first idea was a Cornell box that represented my Grandma’s Drawer. I wanted to include objects that represent her and would tell a story since all of these objects are significant to her in some way. I remember going into her room as a child and always looking at the stuff she had on her drawer. I feel like being observant of those things helped me understand her in a new way.
My second idea is making a Cornell box that represents me. I would want it to serve as a personal mood board that depicts all the things that make me Tori, my values, aesthetic, etc. I feel like this may be board though. I just want to focus on making a visual that helps me identify myself.
I ended up going with my grandma’s drawer idea, which I ended up called “Grandma’s Nightstand.” I had some experience using the gaming software, Unity, so getting used to navigating Unreal Engine wasn’t too bad for me. I started off by building the nightstand using simple shapes and manipulating them to my liking. I was very happy with the outcome. I added wooden and golden texture/material to it and it looked just like the nightstand my grandma owns. I then built out the bedroom around the drawer. I added a bed that looked just like the bed my grandma has. When I added the textures to the walls and floors, I felt like I virtually standing in my grandma’s room.
Once I built the environment out, I started added details and small objects. I added objects that were personal to my grandma and that told a story about her. The whole idea of this project was to make an unconventional portrait of my grandma that would tell a viewer everything they need to know about her. Objects can speak louder than words in this project. Some items that I included were: a Puerto Rican flag, a machete, a cross, cigarettes, jewelry box, etc. As the camera navigates through these objects, I want the viewer to feel like they’re being told a story and understand the type of woman my grandma is.
I thought it was very interesting how some objects greatly contrasted one another. For example, a machete was on the same table as a flower. I thought that this speaks to my grandma’s nurturing, yet protective/tough personality. This is something that I see in a lot of the women that surround me and it is something that I am interested in exploring.
One thing that I was challenged with was finding compatible .obj and .fbx free files. Sometime the files would fail when I imported then so it was a long process of finding the right 3D objects.
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