Alive But Dead

This project is a video biography about the blues musician Robert Johnson. He had quite a rough life, both at home and in the outside world. No matter what life threw at him, and how little support he got, he continued to persist and carry on. He died quite young but achieved what many are afraid to in a lifetime.I designed an atmosphere around the story that felt lonely.
There are no other characters except in text. We hear about them as memories. The buildings are all rundown as well to signify the roughness of his life.
No matter the story, Robert Johnson continues towards the horizon which is a metaphor for his achievements and personal goals.

Rigging & Physics

I Created a system using Mixamo and C4D to create the walk animation loop.
To do this:
First I sourced the walk loop Mixamo file
Then I linked it to a mesh
Finally I added a hat and cloak to which I created a null so that way my animation loop would be grouped together.
NOTE:
All gravity in scene set to -9.81 m/s²
The physics and simulations used in this scene are to create realistic physics for
the clothing.

T

exture

Lighting

Creating custom textures using C4D Redshift’s note based system.

I used ChatGPT to generate a high resolution HDRI to light my scene.

Then I adjusted the hues and levels of the lights to acheive a desert
sunset feeling.

Modeling

I researched the birth house of Robert Johnson, and used it as a reference to create models that would represent a town. I used a cloner and a random effector to make the houses vary.

I modeled cotton fields to accurately represent the things that were happening during the times , as well as show what the landscape looked like. I had to lower the polygon count so it could render.

Test Render

To the left is a test render of a model cabin. Darkwood texture, Country field HDRI, with country sunset hues, and a cotton field.

Sound Design

Music is an art form that I love. I’ve been creating it for years and I try to always find a way to bring it into my projects. For this project there were four different songs, each representing a different section of Robert Johnson’s life. I seamlessly edited them together using Ableton Live 12; with track volume automation.