Apocaloptimist
ROLE
Creative & art direction
TOOLS
Unreal Engine, Premiere, Tripo, Sketchfab, ChatGPT, World Labs Marble, Higgsfield
BRIEF
A two-day Unreal Engine competition at Arizona State University’s California Center Broadway, built around one theme: Apocaloptimist — someone who sees catastrophe clearly, from ecological collapse to runaway AI, and still chooses hope and agency. The question: if the world was ending, what would an optimist do?
APPROACH
My answer was intimate rather than epic. I led creative and art direction on End Scene: Human Connection, a live-action short in which, in the final moments of an apocalypse, a young woman chooses between leaving the world behind and reconnecting one last time with the people closest to her.
I built the scene in layers: hand-drawn storyboards to previsualize, the embrace captured on green screen, then the moment placed inside a destroyed building in Downtown LA. 3D assets were generated in Tripo and sourced from Sketchfab; ChatGPT and World Labs Marble supported imagery and world-building; a teammate rendered the collapsing-skyscraper shot in Higgsfield. I cut the final film in Premiere and finished it with sound design and color.
RESULT
A finished short that lands on its thesis: “The world was ending. But love wasn’t.”
