Underwater Room was a personal group project I worked on alongside Seogene Lee and Doris Huang during the winter break of my junior year at SVA (2022). It was inspired by an artwork, "Way Past" by Pascal Campion, which we interpreted as the girl being in her "zone." We decided to pursue a project together to test our connection as a team and if we would be suitable for a longer-term project (our thesis).

When it came to animating, we wanted to capture a slow-motion, floaty, underwater feeling that would perfectly convey the sense of the girl being fully immersed in her "zone." So, to achieve this, I rigged all the fish and attached them on motion paths, tweaking keyframes to create a fluid and natural movement. I also set keyframes on all the furniture and belongings in the room to ensure that the entire environment came to life harmoniously with the fish and the girl. We opted for day-and-night lighting because it allowed us to showcase the room in two distinct atmospheres, adding drama and depth to the piece. As the lighting artist, I faced the challenge of creating an authentic underwater look. After some trial and error, I incorporated a gobo caustic effect and directed it toward the ceiling to mimic the light filtering through the water. I also added atmospheric haze to tie everything together. For the daytime scene, I focused on the warm tones and keeping the sunlight through the windows intentionally overexposed, just as it appeared in our reference image. In contrast, I used deeper blues to emphasize the cool tones throughout the night scene, with the lamp as the sole source of warm light for a subtle mood shift.

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As expected, we were delighted with our communication and organizational skills as a team! This project was a learning journey for all three of us, and it excited us more to take on our thesis, "Memory Lane"!