My course at university has given us the task to design an eyeball soup. It’s an exercise in computer generated images (CGI) and concept art. In the end we must submit a 3D render of the eyeball soup in a bowl with ladle and a finished concept art of the environment it would be served in. Otherwise, we are free to choose the setting.
I started by brainstorming some ideas and concluded that eyeball soup is something only a crazy person would eat or someone truly desperate. After spending the night reading about the history of cannibalism, I had two subjects that interested me the most: cannibalism during the Age of Sail and World War Two. The latter is crass and after sharing it with my tutor, I decided to go with a sailing ship. I think this is an atmospheric setting with many elements that can be explored and which has not been seen since the early 2000’s with Pirates of the Caribbean (Dir. Gore Verbinski) and Master and Commander (Dir. Peter Weir).
My eyeball soup is situated in the following context:
“Sailing during the 18th century was a long and brutal endeavour. Journeys would last months if not years and were heavily dependent on good winds. A small trading ship ran out of fortune long ago and has been trapped on the open pacific. The captain of this shabby vessel has skipped on provisions at the last port, hoping to make it across the sea in time for more profit. Soon the sailors looked down into empty barrels after unsuccessful attempts at fishing. Pressured by the sailors, who are like him insane with hunger, a skinny cook starts to repurpose every sort of meat he can find, both cargo and crew. In his dirty, underequipped kitchen, he starts on his sinister meals. After all the “good meat” is used up, the soup is served under deck to those who remain.”
Based on this, I started looking for reference pictures of 18th century ship interiors and equipment. I quickly found 2 of the last surviving sailing ships: the HMS Victory and the Shtandart on which my initial sketch is based.
This one turned out well enough that I immediately went on to make a line drawing off it to scan into photoshop for the final concept art.
I also sketched out how I want the final 3D render to look.
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