A Laundromat Story - UE5 Short Film

"A LAUNDROMAT STORY"

Overview

This is a very short and abstract CG short film, made for my Examination project at Visual Magic, to conclude my past two years of VFX studies. Ever since I got into VFX I've been looking forward to creating a CG short film of my own, and this project enabled me to fulfil that dream. 

Lighting and Motion Capture were some key aspects which I wanted to put extra focus towards, both playing a crucial part in this cinematic short.

Storyboard

The storyboard was more or less the first thing I created during the project, and it was a crucial part in selling the concept initially. Looking back, the storyboard was a great resource during multiple parts of production, especially when recording motion capture and when making the camera layouts. It's interesting how closely my final product follows the storyboard.

Motion Capture

For the motion capture I worked with the Qualisys system (QTM). When cleaned up I took it into Motionbuilder for some additional animation and merging of takes. In total the final animation is a frankenstein between three different takes. It's always a fun challenge to come up with creative ways of recording the motion, this time using myself and a stick to replicate a laundry machine door. 

Environment

With the environment I aimed for a bright, green and yellow colour theme, with a subtle pop of teal. I saw a few references to laundromats filled with greenery and pots which inspired me to do something similar.

Color Grade & Post Effects

Assets

Asset creation takes a lot of time and since this only was a six week project it made sense to use as many readymade assets as I could. However I do enjoy the process, so decided to create the hero assets that the character interacts with myself, including the laundry machines, the plastic bench and the paper magazine. The rest was gathered from Quixel or Sketchfab.

Thank you!

This has been a massive project for me, spending close to 300 hours on it. But I'm super pleased with what I've produced, especially with how close to the vision it turned out. Enjoy!