The task of singlehandedly taking these digital assets through the entire 3-D Pipeline seemed impossible to a novice, only familiar with traditional media. Now, however, the product stands not only as a testimony of my potential as an artist, but to my creative growth over the course of the last three years.

Although we were given random traits - both positive and negative - to construct our characters around as part of our assignment brief, Johann Hagen is anything but a haphazard creation. He is a carefully crafted combination of myself, my father and the parts of me I often wish I could get rid of. He is deeply emotive and artistic, studious, incredibly intelligent and brooding - but only when he is completely alone.

Dr. Hagen had to fit inside an environment that embodied his very being. The diorama had to capture his multi-dimensional character; the contrast between the way he presents himself to the public, and his true emotional landscape. I had to find ways to lend greater visual weight to the cellar - emphasizing Johann Hagen's thinly veiled inner turmoil.

The finished Diorama is a powerful piece of visual storytelling, drawing on multiple layers of meaning through carefully arranged points of contrast and sameness. The dilapidated plank flooring hovering over the void, massive stone cuboids comprising the foundations, the lonely windows set into empty walls - all of these become comments on the man that inhabits this crypt for the living.