This short animation was created as part of a series of motion designs on non-human perception. The task was to choose an animal and try to show one aspect of or issue the animal faces through a motion design. My topic was how light pollution impacts bats in the city. It prominently features the 'vacuum effect' - which is when insects are attracted to a street light and thus the remaining areas contain a lower number of insects, thereby, bats' food source is diminished by the lights.

My goal was to show a snippet of a hunt at night from a bats perspective and really tune into their perception. Contrary to popular belief bats are not actually blind but use their sight alongside echolocation. However, I only included elements in the scenery that I deemed interesting for bats. For example foliage, insects and the disruptive light are of note but the background and pavement are not. The flickering of street lights allude to the fact that bat eyes have a different flicker shutter rate than human eyes, meaning they see the world at a much quicker frequency and would be able to see a flicker. The audio used is an actual field recording of bats echolocating taken in the city.

I worked with Blender to model the moths, animated their wing movement and gave them variation through UV wrapping with different wing patterns. I then made the collection of moths emit from an object as a particle system of Boids. This meant I could make them follow the lit part of the lamp and cluster around it. I also animated the camera to simulate a bat's flight as well as a singular moth the bat follows for a moment.

For the foliage and street lamps I took free assets from the Unity Asset store.