This project's concept developed in an unconventional but intuitive way. Instead of sketching storyboards or writing detailed scripts, I built it mentally like replaying short films inside my head, refining scenes through imagination. This approach felt natural because the world I envisioned was minimal: an infinite void, a bed, a character, and a single glowing brain. Drawing it on paper felt redundant. Imagining it allowed me to focus on atmosphere, timing, and emotional flow.

I visualised the character waking up slowly, yawning, sitting up, and looking into the void. I imagined the soft sound of the brain pulsing in the distance and the character instinctively walking toward it. The simple environment let me focus on movement and pacing rather than set design. This mental rehearsal shaped the narrative long before I opened Unreal Engine.

Once I began working in Unreal, I replaced mental sketches with direct experimentation in the viewport. Instead of drawing camera angles, I walked around the digital space, manually adjusting lighting, camera height, and perspective. This hands-on approach became my pre-production. It let me refine the mood and visualise how the scene might feel in a dome.

I also planned the glitch-text sequence in After Effects during this stage. I wanted the memory retrieval to feel both technological and emotional. Phrases like "INITIALISING NEURAL RETRIEVAL…" or "ACCESSING ERASMUS_ARCHIVE" came from imagining what a futuristic memory system might display while booting up. This planning tied the 3D intro and the vlog together conceptually.

The concept and planning phase was fluid, intuitive and rooted in internal visualisation rather than formal pre-production tools. This approach let the emotional tone lead the technical execution.