Reaching the end of this module feels like stepping back from a mountain I spent a year climbing. I can finally see the scale of everything I built, the systems I learned, and the decisions that shaped the film into what it became. The biggest change in me as a filmmaker came from the way all these different skills fused together. My understanding of Alembics became sharper and more intuitive. My grasp of simulation workflows stopped being guesswork and turned into something I could control. I learned what breaks these systems, how to bend them, and how to push them across multiple software pipelines without losing my intention.

More than anything, my sense of narrative changed. I now understand how a story actually functions through movement, pacing, repetition, and emotional rhythm. I stopped thinking of storytelling as isolated beats and started seeing it as a system where every visual choice carries weight. The story circle became a guiding structure and I used it unconsciously while planning shots, environments, camera language and visual motifs. By the end, I realised I had essentially mastered environment design, character design, movement, composition and the entire painterly workflow that unified them.

The biggest discovery, the one that shaped the film the most, was the painterly technique. Once I committed to that look, the entire identity of the film shifted. It forced me to rethink what a frame should communicate and how to strip away unnecessary detail while amplifying emotional clarity. It also taught me how much power lives in silhouette, shadow, colour, and abstraction. The painterly style became the heartbeat of the film, and learning to control it was a turning point in my practice.

The story itself transformed dramatically from where it began. Early previs attempts barely resemble the final vision. Scenes moved, characters restructured, emotional arcs deepened, and the thematic core eventually revealed itself as family. Everything in the film orbits that idea. The possession, the memories, the house, the pipes, the burlap creatures, the flashbacks, the fire, the final return of the family, all of it emerged from that emotional centre. I did not fully grasp the theme at the start, but the film kept pulling me toward it until it became unavoidable.

The challenges that taught me the most were also the most demanding. The animation techniques I chose were heavy, sometimes brutally so. I dealt with enormous scenes, painterly filters, huge lighting setups, Alembic caches, simulations, Boolean driven pipe systems, cloth objects, hand keyed tendrils, volume passes, and multi software workflows running between Blender, Cinema 4D, After Effects, FL Studio, and various AI tools. There were days when the computer simply refused to cope, and those breakdowns forced me to rethink my entire approach. I learned to simplify without losing impact and to build scenes that looked complex but were engineered efficiently behind the scenes.

The breadth of the work I produced in this module is something I need to acknowledge properly. I designed, lit and painted dozens of environments across wildly different scales. I developed a painterly pipeline from scratch. I built a monster that required full facial inflation logic. I animated transformations, tendril systems, thread based organisms, and spider sequences. I created a parallel B plot outside the house with crowds, news reporters and environmental storytelling. I wrote and structured the entire narrative. I crafted the flashbacks, the father’s arc, the girl’s journey, the mother’s psychological collapse, and the escalating relationship between all three. I composed a complete symbolic system for colour, directionality, movement and environmental reaction. I rebuilt lost files. I solved rendering problems that often seemed impossible. I held an entire 10 to 15 minute animated film on my shoulders, from previs to final result.

The research element was not an academic requirement that sat on a shelf. It became the backbone that helped me make sense of difficult decisions. When I did not understand why a certain composition worked, research gave me a framework. When I hit a wall in symbolism or thematic clarity, research gave me language. When technical limitations forced me to rethink solutions, research gave me alternative structures. It shaped the film more than I expected because it allowed me to navigate chaos with intention.

When I step back now, the film feels like a completed circle. The pipes, the blood, the doll, the mother’s presence, the father’s suffering, the girl’s transformation, the exterior collapse, the final flames and the family returning at the end, all of it connects. Nothing sits alone. Every room leads to another. Every motif reappears. Every thread carries meaning. The house becomes a body. The demon becomes a parasite. The family becomes the core of everything holding the world together, even as it collapses.

If anything, this project taught me what kind of filmmaker I am becoming. I learned how to combine technical precision with emotional intent. I learned how to build worlds that feel alive, even when they are abstract. I learned how much a single visual idea can grow if I treat it with patience. Most importantly, I learned how to trust myself across the entire scale of production, from the smallest gesture to the largest architectural space.

BLOG ENTRY – Early Previs Work (February to March)

This previs was created during the February to March previs sessions, when I was still figuring out the basic behaviour of the characters and the emotional direction of the film. Nothing was painted yet and nothing had the stylistic weight it has now, but the foundations of the story were already forming here.

The previs opens with a man sitting on a couch. He is scratching at the sofa. Even in this very rough stage, I wanted the scratching to feel uncomfortable to watch. It was a simple gesture that hinted at irritation and a kind of inner friction that the character can’t contain. This moment stayed important, because even in the final film I rely heavily on hand movements to express emotion. Hands feel like an extension of a person’s will, and if you twist them or push them in the wrong direction, they can make the viewer feel uneasy. So even though this previs was basic, the soul of that idea was already present.

The next shot in this previs follows a belt on the ground. At the time, I liked the idea for what it suggested about the man. The belt was never meant to just be an object. It hinted at the father’s abusive nature, especially when paired with the alcohol and cigarette boxes scattered around. It says a lot about someone when their influence over a space only appears through objects, and it creates a feeling of weakness or cowardice too, because he relies on the belt to assert himself. It is environmental storytelling without having to show anything directly.

This long shot also worked as a place to introduce the title of the film. I always had an interest in bringing the title into the world rather than placing it as traditional text over a black screen. Even in the previs stage, I was thinking about how the title could appear inside the space the characters live in.

The derelict environment was another important part of this previs. The mess around him was there to show the state of his life, but later on it became more meaningful when I started contrasting this scene with flashbacks and other rooms in the house. Those later scenes are cleaner and more put together, which sharpens the sense of decline that the father has gone through. This early previs helped me realise that the contrast between spaces would become an important visual tool.

When I look back at this previs, I can see how it shaped my decisions later. I kept the long shot pacing, but once I committed to the painted world, I made all the shots static. Moving the camera would break the idea that every frame is a finished painting. This meant letting go of certain pans or tracking shots I originally liked, but the static framing supports the canvas-like style much better.

Even though this previs was rough, it played a huge role in the final film. It helped me understand the character, the environment, and what I needed the audience to feel from the very first moments. The scratching, the belt, the dereliction, the tension between objects and behaviour – all of these started here long before I settled on the painterly aesthetic.