Media Design

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Limbus

"Limbus" was the result of a team work for project 2.

The goal was to animate a full 3D animated short film with a self-contained storyline in which a war veteran is caught up in the traumatic experiences of his past.

The style and to some extent the plot are inspired by episodes from the Netflix series "Love Death and Robots" as well as various short films on Youtube, most notably "TheCGBros" and "Omeleto".

The character was modeled, rigged and animated in Blender. The parts of the modular…

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Zahid

"Zahid" was created as a project 1. The goal was to combine an authentic 2D look with 3D animation.

The style of the project was inspired by the Netflix series "Castlevania". More realistic proportions and animation along with various effects should give the impression of a professional production.

The plot is kept relatively rough and should rather introduce a larger story. This allowed the focus to be on expressive images.

Self-filmed references were used as animation aids. The 2D animation…

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ECOVAL

The Ecoval project involves the design of an application for planning environmentally friendly travelling. The application aims to create more awareness and interest for sustainability in the tourism sector.

The focus is on transport options with low CO₂-emissions. In addition to planning low-emission trips, the user is also to be guaranteed time savings by bundling information. The focus of the project was on user experience design. In addition, the web version of the application was…

Temple

The 3D project "Temple" deals with the conception, implementation and presentation of a post-apocalyptic environment.

The goal was to create an authentic atmosphere for the rather gloomy theme. Inspired by the game "Horizon Zero Dawn", a mixture of modern and ancient elements is used.

The assets were created in Blender using various techniques such as Hard Surface Modeling or Cloth Simulation. Substance Painter and Substance Designer were used for texturing. The individual parts were assembled…

Embassy of Media Design

Embassy of Media Design, or EMD for short - this is the name of the alumni and support association for the Media Design program, which will soon be founded by lecturers, alumni and students of the program. The association shall serve as a circle of friends of the study program and as an interface between students and alumni. In this bachelor thesis, a website was created, which will provide a platform for the association in the future.

In order to represent the study program appropriately, the…

PETCH

The number of pets in German households is rising steadily. So are the offerings of digital solutions that simplify everyday life. Bringing pet placement to a digital level without losing the identity of the animal as a living being and family member is a challenge.

PETCH is a platform and web application that allows users to significantly simplify the animal search process. Searchers can filter animals and click through the results, just like in dating apps. If they are interested in an animal…

Make Web Sustainable

The website makewebsustainable.com provides information about sustainable web design and aims to create awareness and lay the foundation for a sustainable web.

The project introduces a sustainable way of thinking for contemporary web design and web development and presents four important design principles as well as a design process based on them.

The project was supervised by Prof. Jürgen Graef and Prof. Dr. Thorsten Weiss.

Space Shuttle Launch

The bachelor thesis deals with a concrete FX simulation and lookdevelopment of a space shuttle launch.

The focus is on pyro simulations. A 3D environment provides that framework and context and allows the embedding in a scenic environment. An adaptation of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA's best known and most important spaceport, is shown. The space shuttle is ready for take-off on the launch pad. The viewer enters the scene during the countdown and watches the last initiated phases…

Fly Away

The motion design project "Fly Away" was inspired by the song of the same name by the artist "TheFatRat" and implemented with the help of 2D animation.

The story of the clip is quite simple and serves more as a visual version of the song.

The focus was to try out different animations and create an appealing style that fits the music track. All the main animation was created in Photoshop - about 600 individual images in total. In compositing in After Effects, lighting and camera effects were…

Tesla Spec Spot

In this work, the complete process of a full CG automotive spec spot is developed and elaborated in a procedural workflow using Alembic caches. From the ideas defined with concept art, storyboard and animatic, a virtual vehicle (Dynamic Rig) was realized using Cinema4D software.

With only a few steps and parameters, the created rig can be applied to any vehicle, offering a high degree of flexibility. In addition, visual effects such as water drops, water splashes and smoke plumes are realized…

Awakening of Nature

The bachelor thesis "Awakening of Nature" is a CGI movie that shows how nature comes back to life by growing different plants. The focus was on creating a procedural tool for generating and animating the tendrils, which can thus be applied to any geometry. Important properties such as their appearance or the way they grow were made customizable using various parameters within the tendril tool.

Another part was the procedural creation of an environment which was used and adapted in the software…

Gendai no kantorihausu

Gendai no kantorihausu or Japanese Modern Country House is a realtime UE4 project with ray tracing. Its goal is to combine Japanese architecture and furnishings, both modern and classical. Shoji walls, numerous setpieces, a genkan (entrance area), ... as well as a whole house was created. The aim is to create an authentic Japanese flare, while it is possible to walk through it in real time.

Dwarf Mine

Dwarf Mine is a 3D game created in the game engine "Unity". You play a young, 126 year old dwarf. The character's mission is to retrieve his beer mug from the mine, which he left in the mine tunnel after work. On the way there, something goes wrong and he finds himself in a part of the mine that is unknown to him. Now he sets out to find an exit from the mine....

Chasing

Chasing is a magazine that deals with time. It looks at the subject from different angles, as well as the scientific aspect and how social life changes over time.

Illustrations were made to accompany the twelve articles, depicting time and clarifying the focus of the text. Many different types of illustrations were used, and always created according to the theme. In addition, there are intermediate pages that, when placed on top of each other, form an hourglass. The illustrations were created…

Music posters and their regularities

During this project I have been working on poster design, more specifically any posters for concerts and music events.

In the process of designing my own posters for different artists, I researched a lot about the way posters consciously direct the viewer's gaze. From this extensive research, in addition to the actual poster series, certain regularities emerged, which I then specified and defined in more detail.

In the course of this project, I was thus able not only to design different…

Sunrise

Ever since the film "Klaus" (2019, Netflix) was released, the bar for 2D animation has been set very high. Through clever use of light and shadow placement, the illusion is created here that the drawn figures are three-dimensional. The project "Sunrise" aims to create a six-second clip that imitates this style. The programs "Adobe Animate" for the animation and "Adobe After Effects" for lighting, shading and compositing were used for the implementation. The result is impressive: The eyes are a…

Polaris

Polaris is an astronomy-themed board game that can be played in combination with an app. The story takes place in the future, where people have managed to fly to the most distant stars. The task of the game is to start missions there as astronauts and collect points by solving tasks and questions. These are found in the associated app, otherwise the game still consists of cards, game pieces, game chips and a playing field.

Through the use of the app, the game offers the advantage that it is…

Solemates - Custom Sneakers

SOLEMATES is a UX concept for a custom sneakers online store that stands out from the usual scheme of shopping sites. Hand painted, embroidered and printed "custom sneakers" are highlighted in a kind of storefront design and presented in a sidescrolling website.

"Just Sneakers - Nothing Else" is not just any motto, but also applies to the SOLEMATES website, because here the user finds exactly what he is looking for directly on the homepage. Large-scale designs, animated and interactive elements…

Cakedreams

Cakedreams is not an ordinary baking book with ready-made recipes. The structure follows a modular principle for cakes as well as moist or dry cakes. Through this modular system, it is possible for everyone to become creative in baking themselves. The book is divided into four chapters, each chapter describes an element of the construction and thus allows an individual composition of pies and cakes. For the baking book, the basic criteria for the structure and design of a book were researched…

Goldmädchen

The thriller "Goldmädchen" was created as part of the subject Film. It is about the self-confident and easy-going thief Sarah, who goes to a classy bar one night in search of rewarding loot. There she meets a new bartender, Colin, who soon confronts her about her deeds. The two make an agreement that will later be Sarah's fate. In the project work, we filled all the roles of a professional film production: from screenwriter, director and cameraman, to the various tasks of post-production.

Proje…

Redesign Moodle

As part of project 2, we as a group set ourselves the task of redesigning Moodle. In cooperation with the university didactics and the supervising professors, we created a new design that is based on the corporate identity of the RWU.

Among other things, we optimized the navigation and adapted other functions such as the calendar, my files and the course areas. The new design of the Hero pages lays the foundation for further iterations of this ongoing project.
The goal of the project is to make…

Magic Arrow

Magic Arrow is an action adventure game with role-playing elements for the smartphone. The game should have simple controls and be easily playable with one hand. The main elements in the game are the battle system with powerups and the quest system. Thus, the player can dodge enemy attacks by moving the character and attack the focused enemy by standing still. The small questline gives a first insight into the game world.

The game was developed with the Unity Engine for Android.

Jack's Dream

Do you know who you want to be in the future? The animated short film "Jack's Dream" is about Jack, a law student against his will. When he falls asleep one night exhausted by his studies, he wakes up as the ghost of his childhood and reminds the adult Jack what he has actually always dreamed of.

Maybe you've already experienced it yourself: a dream in which you see yourself from the outside like a stranger. In this project, we wanted to ask ourselves the question: Who did I want to be as a…

Redesign SCA website

In today's world, a website is unavoidable for successful and widespread communication. For the Sports Club Adelsdorf (SCA for short), the homepage also forms the most important communication tool. The current website of the club was built with a construction tool kit, which restricts the creative freedom in some points. Therefore, in the winter semester 20/21, I dealt with the redesign of the SCA website and developed both a new concept and a new design in close cooperation with the board of…

A climate change hero

Whales are of great ecological value to mankind because they have a surprisingly large positive impact on the world's climate. The animals play an important role in binding CO₂ and producing oxygen. They feed phytoplankton through their excrements, which in turn collect CO₂ and produce oxygen. Phytoplankton produces about half of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere.

Now, if the population of large whales were to recover from its current level of 1.3 million back towards its original strength…

Lost Places

Lost places can be found all over the world. They show a long forgotten history. As part of project 1, I have been working with Lost Places photography to bring this past back to memory. When searching for abandoned places, one comes across dark, mysterious places with a haunting atmosphere.

The journey took us from a children's home on Lake Constance to a car graveyard in the Black Forest, a crumbling gas station in the Upper Danube Nature Park, and an abandoned villa near Lake Maggiore. Each…

Procedural Realtime Environment

In this work, a procedurally generated 3D environment was designed and developed based on the real-world template of the "Kowloon" district in Hong Kong (China). For the procedural generation, an algorithm was developed that generates buildings from modular assets and various modifiers. Due to the millions of ways the algorithm can generate houses, a city can be assembled quickly and easily.

The work was supervised by Prof. Klemens Ehret and Prof. Markus Lauterbach.

Skate South

Oh! Another skateboard magazine? Not this time. Skate South focuses on the people who make skateboarding what it is. Their passion. Their scars. Their perspective. Their mindset. Their cities. Their stories. From beginners, to professionals. From 16-35 years. From Munich to Ravensburg.

A scene where it's okay to be different. Where it doesn't matter how good you are. Where everyone is welcome. A scene whithout prejudices.

Authentic people who share a passion: skateboarding. Captured in a…

EMILY

The inter-semester project was a collaboration of Laurin Völcker and Elias Engelhardt, who realized the film as a practical part of Laurin's bachelor thesis and as a free project 1 of Elias.

The 6-minute short film plays with thriller elements and shows a car chase. Is the chaser just a good-hearted scatterbrain or does he harbor malicious intentions in the end?

Project team
Elias Engelhardt (writer, director, producer and editor)
Laurin Völcker (cameraman, producer, editor, sound designer…

Politics in a different way.

Unfortunately, political campaigns today are often staid and stale. Poor design and boring slogans make politics a topic that young people in particular often prefer to turn their backs on. In my project "Politics. Mal anders." (Politics in a different way), I am looking at how to create a political campaign that sticks in people's minds with the help of eye-catching design and provocative headlines. Special focus was on the poster design and marketing concept for a fictional political movement…

A Bonfire's Life

"A Bonfire's Life" is a short film about the story of a small, magical-looking bonfire. The project is about working out real-time visual effects, more precisely about simulating different weather conditions via Unity's particle system.

For the project, a natural environment of a campfire site was created, on which the weather could be visualized. Due to the complete implementation of the project in the real-time engine Unity3D, the user can not only view the environment via video, but even…

Lilith Danton

Lilith is the mysterious and ruthless protector of the Queen of Corholt, a city-state in the Victorian era. On behalf of the queen, she tracks down deserters in the court and silences them. From concept to final 3D model, Lilith went through several design adjustments and five different programs.

Godforsaken

Godforsaken is a realtime 3D environment based on Unreal Engine 4.

The central element of the environment is a fictional Mediterranean monastery. It is surrounded by a landscape with mountains and sea. Gardens, farmland and horticultural areas surround the central monastery complex and the cemetery behind the monastery. A medieval construction site is adjacent to the side.

The 3D model of the monastery was constructed in Blender and then textured using Photoshop and Substance Painter. In…

Emotion Recognition

This bachelor thesis investigates user experience design for artificial intelligence applications for people on the autism spectrum.

In this context, a video conferencing software with an automated AI-supported emotion recognition is conceived and designed for the affected persons. Due to the autism spectrum disorder, special needs of the target group arise. These are specifically considered in the design to ensure an efficient use of the application.

The work was supervised by Prof. Jürgen…

Bravik - Medieval Township

For the first major project work, the own objective was to design a three-dimensional environment. The result was "Bravik" - a medieval village set in a rural forest and hilly landscape. Thus, the focus was on conveying the idyll and inherent tranquility of this peaceful environment. The virtual tour provides insights into medieval professional houses such as the smithy, the tavern or the mill and opens up the village with all its facets to the viewer.

The project was primarily implemented in…

Communication - a brief history

Communication is the exchange of information. Through the development of language, humans were able to gather and pass on knowledge for the first time and thus gain an evolutionary advantage.

Human coexistence without this exchange would be unimaginable for us. However, increasing technologization and digitalization in particular are bringing about a constant change in communication, accelerating the exchange of messages over long distances and at the same time changing the way we communicate…

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Web >> Forward

Web >> Forward is the blog for innovative web technologies at RWU. The exciting ideas, new technical developments and creative moments of our students are given a space for development here.

No matter if it's about web-based user interfaces for robots or web apps that help to remember places and memories: Creativity and developer spirit come together here. Project work and final theses related to the web do not gather dust in a drawer, but find an interested audience.

The link to the blog: htt…