To commemorate Autism Acceptance Month in April of 2025, I decided, as an autistic artist, to make this piece of 3D art.
In this piece, I created a device that reflects the autism spectrum and the various character traits that are common in autistic people.
Each of the dials of the Autism Spectrum below represent some of the common aspects of autism, such as executive function, stimming, posture, vebal/non-verbal, special interests, etc. When these dials are turned, the central screen lights up a different colour, reflecting how these traits occur in autistic people to varying degrees and how as autistic people, we are very diverse.
To design the model for the Autism Spectrum, I drew inspiration from a wide range of real life electronic devices, such as DJ controllers and handheld consoles. I made this animation, so that it is similar to product reveal animations that are used in advertising.
To animate the colours, I set up some drivers so that the ratio of each colour texture would be dependent on the Z rotation of its respective dial. This mean that I simply had to animate the dials rotating for the colours on the central screen to change. I made sure the colour of labels and lights on each dial corresponded to its colour on the central screen.
I modelled, animated and textured this piece in Blender and I rendered using cycles.
The music used in this video is 'Sentimental' by White Bat Audio.