Poolrooms - Tumblr Posts
p a s s a g e 孤独
art page: www.instagram.com/eth3realm
h i d e a w a y 温泉
I created an Etsy where I’m selling prints if anyone is interested, the support is greatly appreciated!
l o s t a t t h e p o o l p a r k
A X i S 愛
a render inspired from a photograph by: Aryan Navid
iG: @eth3realm
New fixation
Pool rooms. Below are some renders of a liminal-adjacent set I made today.
I saw this post while I was working on my dewott model, and I immediately latched onto the idea. The poolroom idea is an interesting one—strange architecture with traces of brutalism with a mysterious and never ending spread of ceramic tile and water.
The idea of a water pokemon trapped in the poolrooms is fun to think about and adds a kind of cognitive dissonance to the normal ideas regarding existence in the poolrooms. I feel like the poolrooms can be a kind of apotheosis for a water pokemon. To bask for basking's sake, to swim for swimming's sake.
On the other hand, to a water pokemon, the poolrooms can be a perversion of the greatest magnitude. Water is the life-bringer. In rivers, ponds, estuaries, and oceans, there is life. Pokemon, plants, and humans all gravitate towards it, and many live in it and need to be in it. The poolrooms are devoid of life.
The pool rooms are a heaven and hell, and it is up to those who experience it to determine which.
There are a lot of great poolroom art out there. A lot of it is 3D renders, which makes sense given the simplistic nature of the idea. A particularly inspirational one to me was the poolroom section of myhouse.wad. It strikes a nice balance between functional and bizarre, and it was the primary architectural exigence to my own backrooms project.
At some point in the future I would like to make an animation exploring this concept. When this occurs is unknown. At minimum I need to finish the character model, and I need to convert the lighting scene to eevee render.
This piece has given me an epiphany. A doorway as a framing device is a neat trick to enhance the liminal feeling of a piece.
Liminality is often boiled down to a feeling of unbelonging, which is to say, the sense that you aren't supposed to be there.
For all that a space can feel unwelcoming and alien, a picture taken from inside a liminal space will always have the tiniest bit of belonging to the space. A (hypothetical, in the case of a render) person had to actually enter the space to take the picture. In the moment the shutter closes, the photographer belongs nowhere but in there.
When a photograph is taken of a liminal space through a doorway, it's like an affirmation of the liminality of the space. You don't belong and you are acknowledging that you don't belong by not entering. You're peeking at something you know you shouldn't be.
Idk if I’ve posted this yet but look!! I made a new thingy!!
With the easy avenues explored, you search for more.
Maybe there is an exit this way?
The main poolrooms project I'm working on has managed to escape the liminal feeling I wanted and is now sitting halfway between poolrooms and mallcore. I made this scene to try and return to the bizarre architecture that poolrooms are known for.
I did not originally intend to include my work-in-progress dewott model. I did a number of test renders of various compositions of the set (there is an area above the water as well) but the camera angles I chose didn't feel right without anyone to set the scene. I rigged the model enough to make this pose.
If you liked it and want to see more, please say so.
"hello?"
Chamber 01
Art iG: @eth3realm
Tumblr: @liminal-x-wave
once you enter, there is no going back
One of those "fuck it we pool" days I think
Got bored and made another hallway; very low-effort khjsldjk
The underground pool rooms where everyone wears silver clothes. But not shiny silver. Rough degraded silver, grungy silver. It's these rooms made out of concrete and tiles. The water is very shallow. The deepest it gets in your ankles most of the time it is just a very wet floor. But just enough water to make a swoosh when you walk. There's filters and grids. It's lit up with dim lights. The variety of things they have is limited, but it's okay because they're only here for about an hour. They have cigarettes, they have gray milk, and they have lighters to warm up their gray milk if they want to or light the cigarettes. Sometimes, they just play with the lighters because they're bored, but they can't really do anything since everything is wet. They're jets in the water that people like to play with to pass the time. People are teleported here when they have a bad day. It's the universe's way of trying to get you to connect with other people who have had a bad day. Many people make friendships in this place.
After a whole day of lots of hard work, I have these 3D renders
