Forgetfulness River Circus

Posters

Concept Story & Inspiration

About the theme of Forgetfulness River Circus, I want to make a circus scene that people reach by boating across the forgetfulness river after death. The surface of the river is dotted with many small paper boats, each bearing a burning candle. This place does not offer typical performances like animal acts or acrobatics. Instead, there is only a clown, representing the joys and sorrows of life, who welcomes people to the tent and review their lives as a circus show by watching TV together. In the centre of the circus is a slowly burning bonfire. The huge gears spinning in the background serve as a Ferris wheel and also symbolize the passing of life. When they stop spinning, it marks a person’s true departure from the world and the forgetting of their memories.

The main inspiration for this project came from my thoughts on the topic of life as a show while watching a show inside a circus. I wondered if people after death would find it as interesting as watching a circus when they revisit their past lives. Thus, I combined the circus elements with the concept of the forgetfulness river associated with death to get the final theme.

Moodboard

Concept Darfts & Scene Assembling

Based on my concept story, I created two concepts and chose The second concept as the final version. To determine the main island, buildings, and gears’ locations, I drew a rough map draft according to my concept art, then assemble the scene in Unreal Enigine 5. All the models used are from UE5 Marketplace and Sketchfab.

Lighting & Atmosphere

After finishing the scene building, I light the environment based on my concept art and real-life references, and fill light the parts that need to be highlighted. To create the fill light with bad contact next to the clown, I combine what I learnt in class and my own understanding to make a flickering light function material. the specific nodes are shown in Figure 8.

Then, I adjust the Atmosphere items to make the whole environment look more harmonious and to create the effect of a misty river surface in the evening, which makes a mysterious feeling. And I enable the Cast Volumetric Shadow in the lighting settings and adjust the Volumetric Scattering Intensity. This makes the shapes of the lights more distinct and solves the problem of lights passing through the models.

Gears Rotation Blueprints

One of the most interesting elements of the project is the rotating gears in the background. Since I wanted them to rotate continuously and never stop, I chose to build blueprints for the gears instead of keyframe animations. These can be used not only for a scene animation but also for an real-time interactive game.

For changing the direction and speed of rotation, I give each gear an appropriate positive or negative value separately in Rotation in their blueprints.

After Effects Composition

AE is used for compositing the music, sound effects, and visual elements.