To create this scene I laser cut the shelves the shelves out of wood before spray painting and building them with wood glue. For the palm trees, I sculpted the trunk and leaves separately out of clay. I then scanned them into digital space and 3D printed one for each row on my shelves. To get the final shot, I printed a background and then composited several shots of palm trees in different positions on the shelves. Initially, I planned to use other props like a shopping cart but I abandoned it after some trial shots.
When I was growing up my family used to take road trips through the countryside of Malaysia. As a child I would watch out the windows of the car as row upon row of identical palm oil plantations would pass by. They seemed like an invading force, pervasive and unending. This project is meant to demonstrate the pervasiveness of palm oil in consumable products. My goal was to bring the monotony and repetitiveness of palm oil plantations into a grocery store setting so people can actually visualize what they are buying. The bright colors and use of the 3D printer are meant to symbolize the synthetic, processed nature of these goods and their ultimate harm to the environment.