Behind the Scenes: A Bad Fishing Day

INTRODUCTION

Hi, I'm Filip Cica from Belgrade, Serbia, and I've been diving into the world of 3D for almost 10 years. Currently studying multimedia design in college, I've always seen 3D as a way to express my creativity, mostly as a hobby, but I'm planning to turn it into my profession soon while keeping the joy of creating alive. I'm entirely self-taught, learning from YouTube tutorials and helpful folks on Reddit and other forums. Initially, I focused on modeling and sculpting but over time, I've explored animation, lighting, and rendering more deeply towards which I'm leaning more as my future path.

My aim is to tell stories and evoke emotions through my work, even if they're not the most profound tales, as my professor says, "Small ideas should be kept in small containers, and big ideas in big containers." I haven't tackled the big ones yet, so I'll stick with the smaller ones for now. I primarily use Blender, but Substance Painter helps a lot with textures, and I do post-work and grading in Davinci Resolve. I'm excited to keep growing as an artist and see where this journey takes me.

INSPIRATION

So the initial inspiration definitely came from a scene from William Landgren’s short film Impetus(0:44).

And funnily enough, the rest of the idea for the artwork came from a slight disagreement with my mother :D… I know, sometimes ideas really do come from the weirdest places. The most important thing for me was to convey the feeling of a gloomy foggy morning on a lake, a sense of deep isolation, but sort of a pleasant one.

PROCESS

Most of the work was done in Blender.

Robot

I made the model of the robot a year prior to making A Bad Fishing Day, and I thought I would use it for a completely different short film, but he ended up here instead.

Lighting

I did use one add-on, called Physical Starlight, for the world lighting and atmosphere but it wasn't potent enough, so I also added a volume cube to enhance the fog.

Environment

The water simulations were done with Blender’s dynamic paint system, with the canvas surface type set to waves. In the end, I wish I could have added more water physics, especially at the end of the film, but I didn't know how and it would take me too much time to figure it out, since I was on a deadline with the work (I was making it for a college exam).

In the post, I didn't really do much, except adding a bit more with some stock footage of fog I found on the internet, and color grading to add a bit more blue to the picture.