I decided early on to do an animation; ideally something involving liminal horror, as it is a genre that has particularly interested me as of late.
We must first touch upon the concept of liminal spaces. From Wikipedia:
"Broadly, the term liminal space is used to describe a place or state of change or transition; this may be physical (e.g. a doorway) or psychological (e.g. the period of adolescence). Liminal space imagery often depicts this sense of "in-between", capturing transitional places (such as stairwells, roads, corridors, or hotels) unsettlingly devoid of people. The aesthetic may convey moods of eeriness, surrealness, nostalgia, or sadness, and elicit responses of both comfort and unease. It can be seen as a place outside of time and space. They also depict places out of their intended context, often places that seem "mundane" in their intended context."These spaces can be used to evoke unsettling feelings due to the sense of eeriness created by their emptiness.
The post that popularized liminal spaces was the creation of "the backrooms", which went viral and has since spawned incredible amounts of inspired content in various forms.
This post was also the real start of liminal horror, stemming from the final line "God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you." There are two ways that one can expand upon this with regards to the horror aspect:
I much prefer the latter, as the viewer's imagination will naturally work to see things where there are none - the smallest sound could be a trick of the mind, or it could be an 8-foot abomination from beyond our dimension lurking just behind that corner. Tension builds quickly in the liminal space, and the uneasiness will have an effect on the viewer even if there are no scares at all.
I had to use an online video editor since I didn't have any software capable of adding audio to the video, so it's more compressed than the original and there's a watermark. I've included the original video file in the folder to give a look at how it appears in higher resolution, but it doesn't have any sound.
All models in the animation were designed by me.
Creating a more complex space for the animation such as the backrooms or a hallway would have taken longer, so I opted for a deserted infinite road as the setting.
Simply having a person walk down the sidewalk would be fairly boring as a short animation, so I decided it would be best to add some creatures.
The Floating Creature
This was originally supposed to have each of its tendrils be mobile and waving around as it moved, but the sheer number of bones this required crashed my computer when I tried rendering it so they are simply inert in the final product.
The Walking Creature
I chose to leave both of these as the default material texture since I couldn't find anything that quite captured the vibe I was looking for. Having them be monotone grey wasn't the worst outcome since it adds to the drabness of the setting.
Mysterious structure
Designed to look like a shipping container that has been turned into a living space.
I had also designed an interior, but it ended up not being shown in favor of withholding more information:
The fog is volumetric and was moved with the camera to reduce the amount of effort needed to render the scene.
The edges are comprised of multiple rectangular objects, increasing in density as they progess outwards. This creates a more gradual darkening of view, rather than a solid wall.
The title cards are inspired by found-footage and analog horror.