Bleached
This was my final project at Hyper Island, where the brief was to create a short film about climate change and/or AI.
I chose to focus on the issue of coral bleaching and imagined how, in the not-so-distant future, collaboration with AI could play a role in healing our reefs for generations to come. My aim was to present the beauty and necessity of coral reefs while offering a positive perspective on how we might use AI—when we opened our minds a little and dared to dream.
Software used: Blender (geometry nodes, Cycles), Houdini (small use), After Effects, DaVinci Resolve
Here’s a quick storyboard to help get my ideas down. At this stage, I prefer to use pen and paper. I usually start off with post-its so I can physically move the scenes around if needed, or easily add extra artboards along the way.
Here, I set out to learn and understand how to use geometry nodes. My goal was to make the fish follow a curve for more precise control, while also giving them a natural, random movement pattern. During the process I ran into a few problems, most notably, the fish was swimming backwards even though the body animation was working as expected. After some Googling and a lot of good old trial and error, I finally achieved a forward-swimming fish!
