Graduate Work - Winter and Fall 2020
Stranger than fiction - UCLA AUD
Instructors: Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su
Team: Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, Yanrong Yang
Graduate Work - Winter and Fall 2020
Stranger than fiction - UCLA AUD
Instructors: Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su
Team: Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, Yanrong Yang
Graduate Work - Winter and Fall 2020
Stranger than fiction - UCLA AUD
Instructors: Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su
Team: Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, Yanrong Yang
Graduate Work - Winter and Fall 2020
Stranger than fiction - UCLA AUD
Instructors: Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su
Team: Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, Yanrong Yang
Log line: A missing persons case. A police detective and an AI analyst. The fallibility of memory and witness testimony pitted against cold, hard forensic evidence.
The Tether
Graduate Work - Winter 2020
Metaverse - UCLA AUD
Instructors: Nathan Su
Team: Alekya Malladi and Aishwarya Rajasekar
Softwares Used: Cinema 4D + Octane Renderer, Unreal Engine 4, Rhinoceros 3D, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premier Pro, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign.

CONCEPT ART
In a land increasingly inhabited by repeated communications and amplified beliefs, where alternative ideas are not considered, lies this monumental tower that represents ground truth. It is at the target of the city, around which everything is organized. The ones closer to the tower are the purveyors of the “first claims”. They are trying to establish proximity to the reality of events by trying to get there first and communicate the truth as it is. Threads that originate from the truth spiral down further away into what becomes a maze of fabricated information. The city feeds on this information but slowly deteriorates into chaos.
As we navigate through this maze, in an attempt to trace the origin of these threads, more information poses as obstacles, pushing us further away from the center and the path becomes more confusing and convoluted. Added sociopolitical beliefs, confirmation bias and discrimination make it almost impossible to reach the truth.
We always seem to be approaching it but never actually getting closer. So, In a world filled with subjective reality, what becomes the truth?
DATA THEMED KIT
The kit is designed based around objects that contain, store or transmit DATA. The kits range from micro scale like microchips to more sizable objects like a data transmitter.

























ECHO CHAMBERS AND THE LABYRINTH
The scenes are in an order of progression; chaos, confusion and contemplation. Although the models are fairly linear, the experience was aimed to create tension and evoke excitement as we progress. The aesthetic evolved from the concept art into a realm of digitization to make it apparent the broadcast of data and its culmination into conceptual reality. The navigation through the space in real time is fluid but fast paced, camera moves and lighting were challenging, when compared to a still image. It was important to avoid the glare of emissive objects and at the same time highlight the details and intricacies within a scene.
Adopting real-time techniques in the realm of entertainment and architecture will allow us to extract more creative value from a given effort, better design, polished output, flexibility and (of course) ease in render time.




