Box of Multiculturalism

Client

Independent

Year

2022

Role

3D direction, animation, lighting

Discipline

3D animation

The brief

A short piece using one cardboard box and a dozen rituals to interrogate the metaphor of cultural containers.

Snapshot

A 90-second 3D piece exploring how cultures are packaged, traded and lost. One box. Many languages.

Output

Films, frames, broadcast variants

Tools

C4D · Octane · Substance

Duration

8 weeks active

Status

Shipped

Process

How it got made.

Selected stills from the working files — block-outs, style frames and tests that informed the final piece.

Concept sketches

fig. 01 — Concept sketchesPencil + index cards

Cinema 4D blocking

fig. 02 — Cinema 4D blockingGreybox lighting test

Texture experiments

fig. 03 — Texture experimentsOctane + Substance

Notes on the build

The brief was self-set: explore what happens when you treat "culture" as something you can put inside a cardboard box and ship somewhere else. The piece works through a single recurring shot — a box, mid-rotation — that opens into different interiors.

I built the rig so the box geometry and camera move are locked, but every interior is a separate scene file. This let me iterate on each ritual independently while keeping the cuts on the same beats.

Lighting was the hard part. Each interior had to read as "somewhere specific" inside three frames, against a neutral exterior. I landed on a fixed three-point setup outside the box and let the interiors handle their own atmospheric haze.

← Previous case

Vubiquity

Logo treatment & animation

Next case →

Xogot

Character & background — 2D game reimagining