I was thinking that an appropriate symbol for social media is the security camera. It's interesting how the symbol has transformed from passive surveillance into mass data collection. Tech spirit of our times.

In these experiments I wanted to explore the idea of security cameras that have come alive. So I created three different scenes in Maya. The "popup" scene is a group of security cameras swiveling to gaze at the viewer. The "crowd" scene has a bunch of security cameras oscillating in several different layers, my attempt to have surveillance coverage from every angle in an absurd fashion. The "closeup" scene is a single security camera floating in the distance towards the viewer and continues right into the viewers face. Here is the security camera model that I used.

After so much technical spelunking of late, it was refreshing to get back to my roots and do some homespun 3D animation. Did some interesting experiments with abstract textures for the dome light. The Redshift material shaders still seem to slow down my creative process, but maybe I should fully light the scene first and that would naturally change my approach. That's what I love about 3D animation, always new stuff to learn and explore.

Released April 2021