Eva Boddington Rees - Unit 2 (How I came up with my eyeball soup design)

MY IDEA GENERATION:

For my eyeball soup scene, I want to create a scene heavily inspired by the movies ‘Se7en’ and ‘The Godfather’ and the game ‘Mouthwashing.’

I wanted to create a scene that told a rather dark story about a man forced to eat his eyeballs after encountering a Mob Boss. Still, as the scene as the purpose of the scene is to showcase an environment; I’ve used inanimate objects within the scene to convey that the room has been abandoned, leaving only a bowl of eyeball soup on the table.

Here are some of the scenes that inspired the concept behind my room’s design:

‘The Gluttony Victim’, Se7en (1995)

The Dinner Party scene from ‘Mouthwashing’ (2024)

The Dinner Scene ‘The Godfather’ (1972)

I used these scenes to reference how I wanted my final composition and lighting to look. These scenes are both dramatic and tense with dim lighting and create a potential atmosphere that could work for the room I had in mind.

‘Make a child’s room look like an old man’s’ exercise:

For this task, I had to make a child’s room look like it belonged to a bitter old man. This was probably my favourite perspective exercise in creating a story through art. For this piece, I wanted to portray the old man as having dementia, hence why the room looks almost exactly the same as the child’s room in the old man’s memory, except with more ‘wear and tear’ and inaccuracies as he can no longer remember, reflecting the mental state of this man.

The room shows he’s stuck in the past, but shows his confusion and unhappiness through his scribbled-out and ripped-up photos on his bookcase, which is falling apart.

I also wanted to add some morbid mystery to the scene; for example, I added a hand in the bottom left-hand corner.

This image also has a mystery: why is a hand on the ground? Why are the photos all ripped? Who lives here? I added these elements to illustrate the tone and mystery of this scene, but also to make it seem like there was/is somebody still living here.

It is a very dark topic to discuss, but I feel like anything can be addressed as long as it is with delicacy and lots of research into it. I also have experience with someone who has dementia.

Overall, this piece was my most successful perspective drawing.

Fishbowl room exercise:

This exercise was the least successful one I did. The exercise aimed to make the fish bowl the main focus. However, I failed to make the goldfish bowl the main focus and create an interesting composition with just a few objects. It would have looked better if the objects were different sizes depending on where they are in the picture (more minor in the background, more prominent in the front).

In the future, I would improve this scene by using more lighting to contrast the room. I will make the fish bowl the main focus. I would create a more interesting composition by placing the bowl at the centre of the perspective to draw the eye in and make it more significant than the other objects in the room or by putting it in the foreground with a less interesting background.

Tree Perspective Exercise:

The first time I tried to work on my tree drawing, it wasn't very successful as I didn't understand the perspective (especially one as complex as the forest I was using as a reference). I also didn't add much shading (which I could have done to create more depth), so I tried again.

The second time, however, I had a lot more success as I understood the perspective better and could show where each tree sat in the landscape. This piece's saving grace was charcoal, as I created a greater sense of depth using this medium. I am delighted with the atmosphere of the second piece.

'Make an office look like it had been burgled' perspective exercise:

In this piece, we were given two photo references to choose from and base a drawing on. I chose the one of the office because it was more interesting. The aim was to make the office look like a burglary had occurred.

While I could draw the office quite well and show perspective, I failed to present a room where a robbery could have occurred. I found it challenging to make the room look chaotic, and difficult to add more elements. Some of the objects' proportions are very wonky or look unfinished.

This was my other least successful piece alongside the goldfish bowl exercise.

If I were to redraw this image with the knowledge I have now, for example, being able to draw perspective more competently and making an interesting composition, I would try to make the room look more turbulent with the chairs having been pushed around, books all over the floor and desk, and just overall, a more chaotic composition, with the furniture more in disarray, things out of place. I focused too much on creating the images rather than making the story.

My first room design:

For my first design, I wanted to create a very simple room, as shown below.

 

For this design, as I said in my first section, I wanted to reference the two films and the game that inspired me. My original location for the room was a mobster's basement, which I kept for my final piece. At this stage, it looks too neat and tidy for a room where someone has been held hostage and forced to eat eyeballs. Therefore, I did another room drawing later in the blog.

Sculpting the eyeball:

As a starting point for my eyeball soup piece, I made the eye in Blender, using the image shown underneath as a reference.

As a starting point for the base of the eyeball, I created a simple sphere to represent the eyeball itself.

However, I realised it would be a challenge when it came to making the cornea. While I struggled initially, I slowly started to understand the best shortcuts. For example, I started by inserting a circle but then extruding (using the shortcut ‘E’) the circle upwards using the shortcut ‘G (Grab)’ and ‘Y’ (Y-Axis).

Here is the result of my cornea.

And behold, I had my eyeball! But it wasn’t finished yet…

Next, I had to texture it using the ‘Shading’ tools.

Much like the cornea, I struggled to understand how to transfer textures to 3D objects.

Using the shading tools:

I found shading quite tricky during this brief as there was a lot of technical language I did not understand at first. For example, colour ramping and adding nodes.

To begin with, I used the photos below to create the texture of my 3D eyeball.

Above is the iris roughness map, which creates roughness in the iris and helps add lighting.

Above is the eye colour of the iris that I will use.

Below are the photos I used for the blood vessels in the cornea:

Cornea Subsurface Map

Cornea Roughness Map

Cornea Mask

Cornea Diffuse Map

Below, I experimented with using nodes in the shading section of Blender, which was my main challenge. Using AmbientCG, I found a texture that I wanted to use. I downloaded the image at 2k to avoid too much storage but found I only needed to use a few files to create the texture: 'roughness', 'Normal' (either DX or GL works) and 'colour'. This made it much easier to texture the eyeball.

    

Using the method that I used above, I textured my cornea (without the iris).

Below is my 3D eyeball without the iris colour map or roughness. I added each image relating to the eyeball using nodes, creating a realistic-looking cornea.

Finally, I added the roughness and colour images to the iris, as shown at the top of this section as I have shown above.

Overall, I am pleased with how the eyeball came out.

Once I understood how to use texturing better, it was easier to manage, and the technical side reminded me of Procreate and Photoshop's 'blending' tools.

Another detail that was very important to remember was UV mapping and 'unwrapping' objects.

Some textures don't wrap around particular objects properly (objects that have either been stretched, using the scaling tool, or extruded), so they need to be unwrapped.

I will discuss how I unwrapped textures below.

Making the chair:

This is my main chair reference image:

For my chair design, I used Lambert Hitchcock's antique chair as a reference as it fit the time period I was aiming for.

Making the chair was challenging, especially with all the intricate details and complex shape language. Fortunately, I found designing the chair less intimidating after learning to use the mirroring tool and create 'ring-loops' in the chair legs. Once I had sculpted the chair legs, I built the spindles on the legs to make it more accurate to my reference. To begin with, I created a cylinder shape that I then scaled along the 'Y' axis and placed in between the two chair legs using the grab tool (shortcut 'G').

Once I had found somewhere to place the spindle, much like the chair legs, I added ring-loops to make the design more intricate.

As shown above, I created another cylinder in the centre using the modifier (on the right-hand side).

Add Modifier -> Generate -> Mirror

 

And once again, I had found a shortcut to one of my main issues.

Creating the set:

Unlike the chair, creating the candle and bowl was much more manageable.

I added a UV sphere for the bowl, which I cut in half using edit mode.

Edit mode -> Vertex mode (which grabs all the points) -> Select half of it and delete it

Then, I selected the face at the top of the semi-circle before removing it, creating a bowl.

Here is the wireframe version of my bowl:

My final bowl without textures:

The candle was probably the simplest object for me to create because it only required me to make a cylinder (as shown below), for which I then used the Bevel (shortcut ‘Ctrl + B’). Here is my first draft:

The flame was more challenging to design, so instead, I found an image of a flame, as shown below, and I then used the 'point' light tool to create the flare.

I started my work on my cutlery relatively late as I was actively avoiding it due to intimidation. For my first attempt, I tried to make a spoon/ladle of some sort by using a sphere and cylinder.

This was not very successful for a multitude of reasons. For one, I didn’t have a reference image that I could have used to follow (which would have made it a lot easier), and two, my spoon was not aligned against any of the guidelines/axes and, therefore, became too confusing.

And so, I tried again, this time using the guidelines and a reference image (as shown below):

However, I found another reference image that I used as my primary reference. Unfortunately, due to a saving problem, I lost the image of the forks, so I'm using this as an alternative.

                                           

Of the five forks, I chose the one that stood out to me the most, with the most simple yet elegant charm to use as my final piece in my room.

Making the handle/neck (using a cylinder) was easy enough with a relatively simple layout, but it became tricky when making the neck and points.

Making the neck section look natural was challenging, especially against the handle and points. Ultimately, it looked more like a taser than a fork, but it served its purpose and was only a small part of the scene, so I decided it would blend into the environment.

And finally, I had my table design. It was different from my original concept, a rectangular table, but overall, the round table I designed had more personality.

Finally, I had my table design. For my first attempt at making a table in Blender, I used more rectangular shape language compared to my finalised round table, as I was following my reference rather closely. The only difference is I put my chair in the centre of the table and not on the end.

I considered adding a mannequin to the chair but found it would be too much work and not enough time, so I scrapped the figure.

Compared to my finalised table setting, it was definitely lacklustre. Overall, I am happy with how my round table came out.

Making the cupboard was similar to making my first table but with more details. Here are my reference images below:

At this point, I was more confident using the shading nodes. However, many of my objects, due to me extruding or scaling them, did not react well to my textures.

And as I stated above, this is where the UV unwrapping came in. Whenever I had an issue with one of my textures, I would go to the 'UV editing' tab at the top, go to edit mode, UV and then unwrap it.

However, sometimes even that wouldn't work, so I selected 'cube projection' as an alternative, which would fix the issue.

MY FINAL ROOM SKETCH:

For my final concept, I turned my dining hall design into a much dimly lit basement that looked abandoned as it fit my story better and gave the piece a more eerie tone. Also, including multiple items made the room feel less empty as if it had been lived in at one point.

Making this room into its own singular house was probably the best idea that I did for this project as it felt more abandoned and more akin to how a mobster would operate when they want to get rid of someone. I considered adding bloodstains, but I think the eyeball soup was telling enough. Overall, I am pleased with the composition of it.

MAKING AN INTERESTING COMPOSITION:

Once I had finished making all my items in Blender and shaded them, I needed to figure out where I wanted to put everything. Still, first, I went to 'File -> External Data -> Automatically Pack Resources'. This was so each of my items' textures could transfer regardless of what computer was being used.

To add multiple Blender files, I had to append them, which creates a copy of each of your files.

'File -> Append -> Item name -> Collection'

Once I had figured that out, it was smooth sailing from here out.

Knowing many of the Blender shortcut keys was immensely useful, especially the ones for rotating (R), grabbing (G) and scaling (S).

Also, since I had modelled a room (using multiple cubes that I had to resize to make them into walls), it would've been very hard to see if it wasn't for the wireframe view that Blender has. Using this helped me figure out where each item would look the best, and in the end, I came upon the design as shown below:

And finally, I had to create my window, which I did using a cube. But how can you make a window using a simple cube? Simply use the Boolean modifier (which cuts out a space in the object's shape).

  

To create the intended shape of the window, much like my drawer, I scaled the right face of the cube along the X-axis and the bottom face along the Z-axis until I finally had a window like I did in my reference.

As I showed above, I used a website by the name of AmbientCG to get many of my object textures, including a brick wall (which I later made look more realistic by using the UV mapping tools, which will be discussed below), a rusty bowl and fork and a very wooden-centric flooring plan.

While I am happy with this overall design, I should have used a different wood design for the table. This is because the table and floor look too similar from the angle I am showing you. I also think I should have used a different texture for bricks as it makes the room feel too sturdy. Fortunately, I could resolve these issues by adding lighting, UV mapping, and rendering.

Adding the lighting:

Now that I had the composition I wanted for my room, I had to create lighting. For my first attempt at creating lighting, I duplicated the flame I used for my candle to make the eyeballs look like they were on fire.

Unfortunately, the room still looked too dark, so I added sunlight through the window, using the 'sun' light in Blender's roster of light sources. This helped make the room not entirely pitch black but still dark enough to keep the atmosphere. Finally, I added a small spotlight against the table to make it more eye-catching and more apparent to the viewer.

While I liked this composition, it brought too much attention to the candle, not the bowl (which was meant to be my main focus) and the item on the chair, which I had unfortunately unhid, which brought down the design, so I tried again (deleting any extra unwanted items).

The second composition, however, despite having the now deleted object, was a composition I really liked as it gave a great view of the table, chair and bowl. I used an angle like this in one of my final renders.

Using all the knowledge I learned from the perspective exercises and Blender sessions, I successfully created four rendered viewpoints of my eyeball soup scene.

MY FINAL RENDERS:

I was extremely pleased with my final renders as they brought the story into play and created a very ominous/disturbing atmosphere (akin to Ari Aster's Hereditary and Robert Eggers' The Witch). Despite this not being my intention, the piece ended up being just the right amount of chillingly mysterious and unsettling, making the place feel even more abandoned.

Each point of view tells an eerie story, which I showed well. My favourite render is the perspective shown below (through the window), as it makes you (the viewer) feel as if you've come across something you shouldn't have, creating an immediate sense of fear and danger. Also, only the centre of the table is lit, so you can only see the bowl, a chair, and a candle. It was an excellent way for me to bring your focus to the eyeball soup (or, well, eyeballs on fire).

My eyeball soup concept was unconventional, having flames as an alternative to the liquid, a strange kind of fork you'd probably use for eating French snails and the flames defying logic. But in a way, that's what makes it unique.

So overall, despite how hard and stressful all of this felt, I created a finished piece. And honestly, I've never been more proud.