This piece is themed around nostalgia and how it can transport one back in time. It represents our love of storytelling and romance stories. We tackled this by dramatizing the emotional impact of the moment nostalgia hits our main character and the weight of the story to convey the power of nostalgia.
It is present day where we see a man walking into a run down bar, which was once a bustling speakeasy. As he walks in, he is transported back to the livelier days of his youth, where he meets a beautiful young woman. She is the first thing he sees as he enters the speakeasy and she immediately grabs his attention. He exchanges gazes with her and quickly finds himself in love. As quickly as he fell in love, we see the story shift back to present day where we see the same man, aged, in the same place he met his now-late wife.
We went through several rounds of sketches before we landed on a sequence that told our story in the most impactful way. (Scroll right to see previous versions.)
This project was modeled in Cinema 4D and rendered with Arnold. These were our first test models where we explored our camera angles and scene compositions.
Our environment is completely 3D modeled with illustration overlaid on top. It was important for us to blend everything in so that our scenes could feel seamless and intentional.
Lighting and color correction for the scenes were intended to be bright and luminous to emit the dream-like mood we wanted to create.
Our references were based off of New Orleans and the magical environment that it creates. Our architecture was based off of the corner buildings and intricate embellishments on each building column.
The illustration style we wanted to achieve was referenced from American vintage illustrations and paintings, which were centered around seduction and the allure of a woman.
Lastly, our lighting references were based off the warm tones that light up a street at night. We wanted to include hot-spots in our scene to evoke our dreamy and magical atmosphere that our main character is transported back to.
