Context: I was fortunate enough to take part in a collaboration hosted by the great folks at Motion Collab wherein we were tasked to create a scene (2D, 3D, Illustration, Cave painting, etc.) showing a rainy day. Everyone received an assigned time of day, and my time was 4:00AM. Ignoring the times my cats wake me up to be fed, I'm not often awake at 4 AM. This presented a bit of a challenge in identifying what that would even look like in my scene.
Sketching: I thought back to the times I've been up at 4 AM, and a common one that stuck out to me was back in my college days. Often times, the cheapest flight back home from Pittsburgh would be either really early in the morning, or a red-eye flight. Either way, I was pretty accustomed in those days to waiting for a bus in the freezing cold outside of the Pittsburgh International Airport. With that in mind, I wanted to sketch out what the scene could look like.
With a focus on maintaining an asymmetrical piece (scarce right side helps to convey the emptiness of this time of day), I sketched this up quickly. The bus would animate into the scene as though it's driving up, providing reprieve from the darkness of the right side of the scene just as the real bus used to provide me reprieve from the rain and cold.
I took a bit with tweaking perspectives and other elements (the initial background with skyscrapers was scrapped to reinforce emptiness), but I'm quite happy with the end result.
Modeling: One of the joys of working in 3D motion design is getting to model every day objects. This analytical lens allows me to see things for the first time again. I mean, how often are we really contemplating the design and curvature of a regular bus stop?
I got a lot of practice with this work as I wanted the bus stop to be as close to real as possible. With a great reference by my side, I went into Blender and did what I could to replicate it.
(Thank you to NYC Street Design for such a great reference pic.)
Additional Touches: As the bus stop implies, there was an opportunity to add an advertisement to the board. As a marketer, I was thrilled to be able to relive my college days and create fake advertisements. It was important to me to create an advertisement that highlights the escapism that ads tend to rely on. The rain element gave me a very clear direction: making an ad that says "sure sucks about that rain. Here's how we're going to profit off of it."
My mind pointed in a few directions to take the ad: a vacation, a pair of boots, and a bottle of Vitamin D for seasonal depression (which may as well be a requirement for Seattlites like me). This led to me sketching those out:
I ended up going with the second option. I think it most easily identifies the element of capitalizing on the circumstances that ads often do. No one wants to be getting caught in the rain (unless you perhaps also like piña coladas) so a sale for boots is the perfect opportunity. The direct reference to Hunter Boots was very much an inspiration on this part.
Despite conceiving the idea while thinking of Pittsburgh, I wanted to add in a reference to Seattle, the other very rainy area that I've spent many years of my life in (do I have a pattern?). I decided to make the bus route number be 206, Seattle's area code. As for the intended location of "Anywhere," I had flashbacks to sitting in the rain for the bus and thinking, "I don't care where the bus takes me, I just want to be on it." And through inspiration by Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," I took the midnight* train** heading anywhere.
*actually 4 AM
** actually a bus
Compositing: One of the most crucial parts of putting this piece together was the addition of volumetrics (visible rays of light) coming off of the streetlights. It added a sense of realism, and also helped to sell the heaviness of the atmosphere by virtue of all of the rain.
Speaking of rain, I learned about CC Rainfall in After Effects from this project. And when your entire project is based around the existence of rain, that's a lifesaver. I added a few inorganic rain drops to the project, specifically coming off of the bus stop's roof, and from there I was ready to add to the collaboration.
Result: Here is the final piece, with everyone's addition. If you have the time, feel free to watch everyone else's submission as well. It was a great time working (independently, but also collaboratively?) with these other designers. I'm looking forward to the next chance to join in on something like this.
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