Pyrrhosoma

A dark burrow, a toad, a luminous dragonfly. These are the ingredients for a new film project by Alex Lehnert and Josh Johnson, created with MAXON CINEMA 4D R15!

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Josh Johnson and Alex Lehnert are freelance 3D artists who both have an affinity to CINEMA 4D and use the program on a daily basis. In fact, they have never met personally but worked together very closely while creating David Lewandowski's film Tiny Tortures. While working on this project, Josh and Alex decided to create their own short film, which ended up being the cornerstone for Pyrrhosoma.

Although never having met in person before (or thereafter), online communication made a successful cooperation easy. Based on an idea the developed together and a script written by Josh, the artists set out to create their gloomy fairytale in which a toad in a burrow and a dragonfly who occasionally flies by play the main roles. In addition to the film being a promotional film for both artists, it was also meant to showcase the new features in CINEMA 4D R15.

The initial wave of enthusiasm was followed by a small shock. All assets had to be created for the film exactly as the script demanded: the toad, burrow, stones, mushrooms, spider nets and a lot of vegetation. In addition to all the modeling that had to be done, an eye had to be kept on the render time considering the fact that only three weeks were planned for production.

An essential part of the production was sculpting, which was used to create the wide range of organic shapes. Because Josh and Alex were cooperating via the internet, there were always hurdles that needed to be jumped with regard to texture paths and materials but these were quickly mastered using the new Texture Manager. And the new Bevel tool saved the day more than once and made it possible to quickly create optimized geometry at critical locations on the models. Because neither artist really sees himself as an animator, the animations for the toad were created using the new PoseMorph options.

The Physical Sky object was used in conjunction with the Physical Renderer to achieve the right mood. They first rendered to the Picture Viewer where they made liberal use of the filter options. This made it possible to quickly see if the lighting was as they wanted and if the balance of light and shadow was correct. Alex commented, This is one of CINEMA 4D's finer features: you can create images with a dynamic color spectrum without having to worry much about the technical aspects. Josh and I both have experience working with live film and we both know how it is when you're constantly thinking about which lens should be used for the next shot in order to achieve the desired effect!

About working with CINEMA 4D, Josh adds: The program is not only completely intuitive to use, but is also a complete package in itself. Regardless of whether you're modeling, painting textures, sculpting or animating, CINEMA 4D offers all the features you need in a single application. For example, Alex had never sculpted before. When it was time to fine-tune the various assets, he began sculpting for the first time and was able to achieve great results.

So far, only the Pyrrhosoma teaser has been finished, which was rendered in time for this year's MAXON user meeting using the new Team Render. The entire short film will be ready by the end of this year.

Alexander Lehnerts Website:

www.alexander-lehnert.com

Josh Johnsons Website:

www.vfxdaily.com

LINK:	http://www.maxon.net/en/news/singleview-default/article/pyrrhosoma.htm...
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