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After a thorough research that ranged from philosophy books to economic articles I realized that one of the main causes for the time wasting feeling was Capitalism. One can say that consumerism is the new religion in modern society. We are living in a world of endless possibilities, We sanctify products and spend our lives always looking for more, and once we get what we want it only takes a second for us to desire something else. Many researchers suggest that this state of an everlasting chase is what causes many of us to feel dull or vacant. I wanted to address that issue while focusing on the aspect of vapidity and time wasting under capitalism.

My initial idea was to create multiple sequences which would show moments of emptiness in modern day life. I felt that creating basic concept art was crucial for the development of my project, so I first started drawing some scenes that would better help me visualize my future movie. The concept art phase allowed me to explore many visual and conceptual directions, yet I wasn't really comfortable with any of them and felt that something was still missing.

While I wasn't completely sure how to address the movie from a conceptual point of view, I suddenly had a moment of a realization. If the project is all about being lost in nothing then the natural way to express that idea is to get lost in nothing...

I wanted to create a feeling of wandering around in a world full of nothing. I was picturing a colorful world, made of products and delivery boxes. Above surface this world looks perfect and shiny, however, as you zoom in you start to realize it is all empty and meaningless.

The idea here is to show that although Capitalism creates a comfortable world for us to live in, in reality we are all locked in a "golden cage" wasting our lives away in a chase after more money, more power, and more happiness which is clearly impossible to win.

As I mentioned before, the first step in creating this video was to drawing reference scenes to help me come up with ideas for the 3D scenes. When I felt I have a sufficient visual understanding of my world, I started modeling the main objects and scenes. While I was working on my scenes, I came up with a 'gimbal like' solution for the camera movement and tried to explore as many cameras angles as possible. The emphasize on camera movement was very important in order to create the sense of wandering around in this imaginary world, as we get lost in nothing.

After the shots were ready, it was time to focus on textures and lighting. Since the main idea behind this movie is consumerism, I decided to cover this world in all sort of references to capitalism and products. To create this world, I design packaging boxes as well as delivery icons barcodes and social media textures.

This is it! This project was one of the most complex challenges I have faced during my studies at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, but it was definitely worth it!  When I look back, I can only appreciate the significant learning curve that I have experienced during the making of this video. It was a very large scale project - from concept development to modeling to animation to post production, I tried to learn as much as I could from every aspect. Working on this project had a tremendous effect on my 3D workflow and technique and I am sure it will serve in my future work. I am extremely happy with the final result and can’t wait for the next project!