“Sari-sari” - Meaning “variety” or “everything”.

The story goes about a quiet day of Angelo Aguilar, who inherited his mother's ‘sari-sari’ store down the block. He's seen lounging around on his dingy plastic chair, barely supporting a person his stature as the sun passes by turning into the bright night sky he feels so familiar with. Touching upon themes of Family and Tradition, I created this piece with my family in mind and wanting to reconnect back to my Filipino roots. Recreating nostalgic scenery, reliving the atmosphere and moulding it into a piece that many others like me, can relate to.

I wanted to create something with a wide variety of environmental elements as well as including something that would be fun, bright and vibrant to stand out on the screen. Knowing from previous Yagan projects, I would have to work with higher saturation and contrast levels so that the video wouldn't be dulled out in sunlight as well as having to adhere to the road and public street regulations listed on the brief. Starting off with themes I wanted to tackle, the base narrative told a story of a spiritual tradition within a scene and evolved into themes of culture, family, tradition, nostalgia and ancestry. This kickstarted wanting to do a piece to reconnect with my Filipino upbringing and dedicate a story for my family.

Having greater consideration of the Yagan brief restrictions, I was able to hone in on a specific core memory of mine in the Philippines visiting the sari-sari stores on the way home from school. Being able to treat myself to sweet, salty and savoury snacks after a full day of classes, and the nostalgic factor of passing by these stores with the array of vibrant and diverse packaging punching me in the face. I wanted to tell the story of a Sari-Sari store owner and the history behind the store.

I wanted to gather enough resources that were distinctly Filipino, and had aligned with what I remember Philippines looked like so that there would be a better connection between visuals and audience as I'm ideally telling a story about a culture the audience may or may not be familiar with. Trying to stick with the same bright, vibrant colour palettes to be eye-catching to any passer-bys.

Although creating Angelo was in scope to be created, I sadly had to cut the mother from the story and re-scope the story to accommodate with the workload the project was demanding. The narrative and story was kept vague, but the initial driving question to portray a 'homely' and 'comfy' atmosphere through the environment will be kept consistent throughout the project.

From this I was able to construct the LookDev into a layout that fit perfectly with the Yagan Mask provided as to give an idea of which side of the scene will be projecting towards The Shoe.

From this point, I was able to knock out iteration after iteration focusing on the composition and layout of the environment as to upskill as well as cater to the Yagan Tower specifications.

Initial Greyboxing and Implementation

Thanks to some easy tutorials, I was able to step foot into simple UE5 Niagara systems and created a quick Niagara system to simulate wind lines, posters flying through the wind, and trash tumbling about on the streets. This was to add more dynamic motion to the piece besides the wind system with the foliage. I was also able to include a texture displacement on the snacks to simulate it 'moving' in the wind.

Ice Cream Cart

Snacks - Chip Packets, Box Snacks, Jars of Candy

I was aiming to create as low-poly assets as I could as it was small and far enough that any further details won't be seen by the audience. This also allowed for a more modular asset creation and enabled me to reuse the same mesh for different variations of textures, along with the size variants.

I tried my best to encapsulate popular Filipino snacks but put a 'non-copyrighted' twist onto it to avoid any issues as the Yagan Tower has branding restrictions. Making it more generic looking but keeping a similar colour palette as the colours are the more memorable part of the brands. All painstainkenly handpainted to give it a more authentic feel.

Dojo

Forest