Maker of Manic Robot-Drummer Video Shares the Code

Mercredi, 29 Septembre 2010 00:00

Maker of Manic Robot-Drummer Video Shares the Code

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Mike Winkelmann is being too modest when he explains on his website that he “makes a variety of art crap across a variety of media. Some of it is OK, but a lot of it kind of blows ass.”

Judging from the ingenious robotic hip-hop contraption seen in his “Instrumental Video Nine,” Winkelmann’s work is in fact capable of blowing minds instead.

A finalist in next month’s Vimeo Festival and Awards

event, the short film, embedded above, builds its assembly line-style cacophony of percussive bleeps and swooshes around what appears to be an old-school snare drum, then juices up the action with a flurry of coffee-cup-size helicopters that flutter into view.

To create the precision-synced performance, Winkelmann, aka beeple, used Cinema 4D’s animation program to model and time each instrument.

“From a technical perspective,” he told Wired.com in an e-mail interview, “the main challenge for ‘Instrumental Video Nine’ was to sync every hi-hat hit, snare hit and every other single sound you hear in the music to the movement of some instrument in the video. This was an extremely time-consuming process that was done entirely by hand.”

In his “Subprime” short film embedded above, Winkelmann used motion-graphics software to satirize the housing industry meltdown.

Winkelmann has no formal training in art, music, film or design. Instead, he credits his engineer father as a key influence.

“My dad built an airplane in our garage when I was growing up so I have always been fascinated by big, messy mechanical structures,” he said. “I have a real appreciation for what most machines look like when they’re actually working.”

Chris Cunningham’s mechanistic music videos for Aphex Twin (embedded below) also served as inspiration, as did Darren Aronofsky’s low-budget 1998 movie Pi.

“Those giant, messy, semi-lo-fi machines were a big influence on me,” Winkelmann said.

For those ready to be influenced by Winkelmann, the filmmaker is releasing the entire set of Cinema 4D source files used to render “Instrumental Video Nine” for free.

“People can go in and dissect exactly how everything was modeled, textured and animated,” said Winkelmann, who released the files under a Creative Commons license.

Winkelmann, who earned a computer science degree from Purdue University and now works as a web designer in Neenah, Wisconsin, says he’d like to see more insiders sharing such tips and resources.

“In this industry, techniques are very closely guarded but this is something I would like to see happen more often in the animation/VFX community to help move things forward and increase the overall quality of all motion design,” he said.

“Instrumental Video Nine” will be screened at the Vimeo Festival + Awards show to be held in New York City on Oct. 8 and 9. Viewers can vote for the film in Vimeo’s Peoples Choice competition.