Paul Siayngco

“Moloch” is the epitome of my journey as an exploratory concept artist, 3D sculptor, rigger, and creature animator. This short-teaser-film provides the audience a glimpse into an alternate reality of planet Earth, a planet conquered by a dystopian society of humans struggling to co-exist with the vast mutated species of modern-day animals. The methodologies and practices concerned to explore my research question of creature designs and biological structures will be thoroughly examined and justified throughout this documentation.

The origins of implementing creatures as the centre of my capstone project emerged back in the second year of Digital Design Studio. We were introduced to the world of creature design through Zoo trips, ideation, concepting, and to the final creation of our 3d modelled and posed creature designs, I was never more intrigued and fascinated with such a niche department in the industry of design and animation. From then on, I knew creature design and animation were the pivotal elements for my capstone project. Past student capstone films generally followed a narrative as their focus, due to this, I wanted to diverge from the mainstream and challenge myself into approaching this capstone project with a more technical and experimental focused methodology.

Throughout this capstone project journey, I have realised that my previous lack of experience with sculpting, retopology, texturing, and rigging had hindered my progress on the capstone project significantly. This was a learning lesson regarding self-teaching and being wary of excessive ambition. However, I see this unfamiliarity of technical processes in preproduction as challenges awaiting an opportunity for both the growth in mental patience and creative skill beneficial for my career within the digital design industry.