Concept

The Mind Cleanser is here to guide us through fun exercises to relieve our stress. He understands our struggle against the world and the expectations we place on ourselves. Instead of running away, we will take the world's weight off our shoulders together and learn to sit in our uncomfortable silences.

In the terrifying vulnerability of being nothing, we can learn who we truly are.

Inspiration and design

I was directly inspired by Yoga with Adriene, my favorite yoga guidance Youtube instructor. I love how her videos inspire me to move my body and breathe. She's the creator I go to for my "mind cleansing".

The film's characters and environments are based on her setup, including her lovely dog Benji, which I replaced with the animated dog named Bongo. The Mind Cleanser character changed a lot from the preliminary sketch, but the rest stayed consistent with the original concept.

VR Sculpting

All the characters and props were sculpted in VR, using Adobe Medium.

Motion Capture

During the making of this film, I only had a few weeks of experience using Blender. I didn't know how to animate yet, so I explored any shortcuts that would help sell the acting without too much work. This is when I stumbled upon the Blender add-on Faceit, along with the iPhone app Face Cap.

By rigging The Mind Cleanser's head using the addon, I was able to auto-generate a face-rig with expressions. Then I connected the rig directly to Face Cap, where I could control his head by acting it out in front of the camera.