You don't have to be an animator to get the jokes in "Welcome to 3D Software."
“You can make some Tracer porn or watch her do the Fortnite dance,” 23 seconds in, was the first of several lines in “Welcome to 3D Software” that got an unexpected laugh out of me. The last time I used any 3D modeling software was a solid 15 years ago, so I went into this short video not really sure there’d be any jokes I’d connect with. But artist Savannah Shire’s parody is almost as relatable as Bo Burnham’s hit Welcome to the Internet for the terminally online. If you’ve played a videogame on a computer at any point in your life or ever used an Adobe product, there’s something in here for you.
Burnham’s song, from last year’s incredible comedy special Inside, pairs a simple, jaunty piano melody with jokes about all the things our online hellscape has gifted us. “Would you like to fight for civil rights or tweet a racial slur? Here’s a tip for straining pasta, here’s a nine-year-old who died.” And so on and so on—it’s funny and bleak, like a lot of Burnham’s comedy.
Shire’s parody about 3D animation and related software is more specific and less likely to make you weep for the state of humanity, but it might make you flash back to some moment where you were screaming at an unresponsive Photoshop. Instead of “Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids” we’ve got lines like “Make a short film starring Master Chief or photoscan your dog.”
I love that the short parody is such a spot-on representation of Burnham’s staging, complete with the dark room and blue spotlight on the star pianist—except in this case it’s a cutesy 3D rendering of Shire jamming out. A few manic close-ups also provide an excellent look at the texture work that went into the model. It’s just charming as heck.
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