Tavi Maas-Despain

3D Art Processes, Me, and My Obsession With Half-Life

By Tavi Maas-Despain

Howdy! My name is Tavi MaasDeSpain (he/they), I am 17 years old, and like my bio says:  

“I like all things digital media” which is a pretty vague statement, so I thought for my introduction I would cover some of my process, where it all started, and what I actually do.

Context 

My introduction to digital media started at a very young age. I always watched small 3D animations made using SFM (Source FilmMaker) on YouTube, whether that be (now aged) memes, or actually competent short films. SFM is an animation software that runs on the  Source Engine (made by Valve), which is a game engine responsible for Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead(1 & 2), Portal(1 & 2) and my absolute favourite, Half-life 2, which is very near and dear to my heart, and has been since I was 8, I would go on a plot summary but you would be reading a thesis if I did that, all you need to know is that it’s a massive influence on my style, which is reflected in my love for brutalist architecture, dystopian narratives, and sci-fi. 

So it’s no surprise that I gravitated towards SFM animations, because of its proximity to Half-life 2, as they both rely on the Source Engine, and were made by the same developer ( Valve). This was only amplified upon the release of Half-Life Alyx in 2020, and subsequently also Source 2 FilmMaker (or S2FM) which ran on the Source 2 engine, which Valve purpose built for the release of Half-Life Alyx. which caused a frenzy of Half-Life fans to jump to making short films in S2FM, which is what inspired me to start 3D animation.

I was awe-inspired by these animators, like ThePerryGod, who I credit for single handedly being the inspiration for what I do now. Something about one soul person having the ability to create animations of such quality, both technically and artistically, of my favorite piece of media no less, was captivating. From then on I started to learn 3D animation in Source FilmMaker.

Some of my first Half-Life related pieces

The Beginning And What I Learned

At the very beginning my pieces were relatively standard, a lot of my very first pieces were simple scenes that had some sense of environmental story telling to convey a simple plot, kind of like looking into a diorama. I came to find these not very satisfying after a while, as they were fairly formulaic, I came to find I really enjoyed lighting, and using negative space. Which is why I chose those two images as my examples because they are some of the most relevant to what I've done recently. This was around the time I started honing in on my process,  relying heavily on shadows to create a negative silhouettes of the 3D model, this also helps hide the shortcomings of the 3D model textures, since some of the half-life assets are old

(Using shadows to hide imperfections in 3D models is also something you see in a lot of 3D animation; it's glaringly obvious in movies like Shrek).

This kind of process resulted in me creating my little own technique in SFM i affectionately refer to as “micro-lighting”, which is where i use several dozen lights to compensate for SFM’s shortcomings when it comes to shadows(mind you SFM is a decade old), and it allows me to abstract the character in lighting that otherwise would technically be impossible with just one light source, as 3D animation is a very logical medium that sometimes sacrifices aesthetics for realism.