Insomnia is my first 3D animated short film, created in 2021. The film depicts the feeling of a restless, sleepless night and was the first time I attempted to create a complete 3D short by myself from start to finish.
I handled every stage of production, from the initial concept to the final edit, using Maya, Substance Painter, After Effects and Audition. At the time, this project was incredibly challenging for me because I had never worked on something of this scale on my own before. It forced me to learn a lot of skills very quickly, including rigging, proper 3D modeling, lighting, rendering, texturing in Substance Painter and editing.
One of the biggest challenges was the rendering process. Because of hardware limitations, I had to find ways to make the project more manageable and, after getting advice from a professor, started working with render layers for the first time. That experience taught me a lot about adapting a workflow when the technical setup is not ideal.
Looking back, Insomnia marks a very important point in my development. It was the project where I first realized how much I could figure out on my own when I had to, and many of the skills I learned during this production are still part of my workflow today. Even five years later, I still think the project holds up and shows how adaptive and persistent I can be when working through a difficult production.
