Aria of a Starry Night
3D music video with stylized celestial environments
Overview
This is a personal project I worked on during the summer, when I collaborated with a music group to make a full-length music video — I solo-made a 4.5-minute-long 3D rendered video accompanied by the soundtrack produced by the music group. The technical areas entailed: environment set-up, lighting, character rigging, cinematography, animation, procedural shaders, particle effects, cloth/hair simulation, and post composition & color-grading.
It was my honor to have the opportunity to work with such a beautiful piece of music, and I wanted to try my best to convey the emotional impact the music brought me. On a more personal note, this is also a project that celebrates the anniversary of my favorite Vocaloid character (the character in the video, and the voice in the music).
Most scenes were built and rendered in Blender Cycles, with the exception of one little background rendered in UE5, then everything was put together and color graded in DaVinci Resolve.
Stars and Summer
Many of the scenes were made out of my mental images of the character living the story described by the lyrics — the journeys she had taken, the determination of her choices, and the kindness she gives…
Two of the major themes of this music video are “stars” and “summer”. It might be already very obvious, but the shooting stars scene is inspired by the very classic Makoto Shinkai movie, 君の名は (Your Name). I wanted to create something similar to that; something serene, but that meanwhile conveys powerful emotions underneath.
The feeling of “summer” is also something I’ve always looked forward to creating — it is a theme very common in Japanese photography and animation. Somehow, the time period of summer often accompanies the happy memories of youth and self-discovery. The sequence “夏の記憶 - Memories of Summer” is perhaps just, my interpretation of “summer”.
Anyways, that was enough talking — hope you enjoyed!
Credits
Character model by 椛暗 (rigging done by myself), tree assets from Treezy, flower/grass assets from Geo-Scatter, walk cycle animation from Mixamo (all other animation by myself).