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Dreamweaver: An Interview with Lynx095

2024-05-07

Trending | Top News | CG Challenges

Fox Renderfarm Interview

Take a riveting trip into the world of dreams as we reveal the artistic talent of Lynx095, the imaginative creator of the enthralling animation "Dream Journey." This gifted artist, who was recently named the Community Winner in Polygoniq's "Dreamscapes Challenge," is an expert at creating fantastical settings that defy reason but capture the imagination. Lynx095 creates a visual tapestry that defies traditional storytelling by skillfully fusing parts of reality, childhood memories, and the infinite reaches of the dreamscape. She has a remarkable eye for detail and a deep understanding of the subconscious mind.

As the leading cloud rendering service provider and render farm in the CG industry, Fox Renderfarm is glad to have the opportunity to sponsor this challenge. Join us as we delve into the mind of this remarkable artist, unraveling the creative process behind their award-winning work and exploring the depths of their artistic vision.

Fox Renderfarm: Hi, Lynx095! Thank you so much for accepting our interview! Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?

Lynx095: I think that the most important thing I can say about myself is that I’ve always been a very creative person. As a child, I was enrolled in an after-school art program, where I learned drawing, painting, sculpting, and photography. Later in high school, I switched my focus completely to fiction writing. But I didn’t manage to finish any of my stories because as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that the Ideas I had as a 15 or 16-year-old were simply bad. Currently, I work as a website and e-shop manager for a small company, but sometimes I also do video editing and graphic design as a part of my job. About a year and a half ago I started learning 3D modeling in Blender, though my progress is very slow as I don’t have a lot of time to focus on this hobby, due to also having other hobbies and a cat. Right now I’m also learning digital painting in Photoshop and writing a novel, which I hope to finish this year. I’m also a very creative cook and I grow my own chili peppers and herbs on my balcony.

Fox Renderfarm: It's fantastic to see your work recognized with a 'Community Winner' at Polygoniq’s Dreamscapes Challenge! How does it feel to be celebrated for your achievements?

Lynx095: It’s an amazing feeling. I honestly didn’t expect that I would win anything at all, as I’m an amateur and I’ve never participated in a 3D challenge or a competition. Polygoniq’s discord server is full of people who are far more skilled at animation than I am, many of them are professionals and are constantly posting beautiful works. Just being able to compete with them would be a great honor.

Fox Renderfarm: Could you give us a brief overview of the project that won you the 'Community Winner' at Polygoniq’s Dreamscapes Challenge?

Lynx095: In my animation, I was trying to create a feeling of experiencing a world that operates on dream logic, one that has its own consistent set of rules, but the dreamer as an outsider to that world will never be able to figure them out. I also wanted to show the dreamer's subconsciousness taking in things from the real world, like a car, childhood toys, food, etc., and rearranging them in a new and nonsensical way.

Dream Journey © Lynx095

Fox Renderfarm: What was the inspiration behind creating a world that operates on dream logic, with its own consistent yet unfathomable rules?

Lynx095: Well, when I showed my animation to a friend, she asked me if I’m taking LSD, so I guess that…

Just kidding. Honestly, that was the idea I got from the announcement where they said that the theme was “Dreamscapes”. This is what I took away from that and I expected that the other submitted works would be similar to mine. Only when the other submissions slowly started showing up in the Polygoniq Discord server, I realized that I was working on something very different from the other and I even panicked a bit thinking I had misunderstood the assignment. But I have always been interested in the topic of dreams and in the past, I’ve had lengthy conversations about dreams with friends, family members, and past partners.

Fox Renderfarm: Can you walk us through the creative process behind your work, from conceptualization to final execution? Do you have a standard working pipeline?

Lynx095: I don’t have any kind of standard pipeline, this was the first time I took on a project of this size and complexity. My creative process is very messy and chaotic, I was mostly figuring it out on the go. I created the scenes out of order, in fact, the first scene I finished and rendered was the one I ended up cutting from the animation completely. Sometimes I was working on one of the simpler scenes on my laptop while rendering one of the more complex ones on my more powerful PC. For my most complex scene, the one where the car is chased by forks, I had to make it twice. The first time I started by making a complex maze of slides and platforms before figuring out how the car would through the scene. That wasn’t working very well, so I decided to start from scratch. The second time I started with the movement of the car, including the drifting, and the single marble that is used for the wipe transition into the next scene. Then I added the animated forks, the maze, and the rest of the moving objects. The second version worked much better, as you can see in my final animation.

As for the video as a whole, after I finished rendering individual scenes I stitched them together in Davinci Resolve, added a few fancy transitions, and license-free sound effects and music. I had to do all the video editing on the very last day of the challenge, so I feel like I could have found a music track that fits my animation much better if I had a bit more time.

Video editing in DaVinci resolve © Lynx095

Fox Renderfarm: How did you approach the concept of the "dreamer" as an outsider to the dream world, and how did you convey their perspective to the audience?

Lynx095: I expected the audience to identify with the driver of the car, and I used the recurring motif of eyeballs to convey a feeling of constantly being watched, as well as the general nonsense of the environment that the scenes are set in. Also, the feeling that the car is constantly moving, always progressing from one absurd location to the next, and you can never know what you can expect in the next scene.

Fox Renderfarm: Could you elaborate on the specific techniques or animation styles you employed to convey the feeling of experiencing a dreamlike state?

Lynx095: For me, that was about combining the familiar with the unfamiliar and nonsensical. For example, in the first two scenes, the ones in the forest, I tried to make them look like scenes from a car commercial, where the car often drives through a forest or some other natural landscape. Then in the fourth scene, I took inspiration from car chase scenes in action movies. Except now it isn’t cops and gangsters speeding through a city, but a tiny car trapped in a child’s toy maze dodging falling forks.

Fox Renderfarm: Can you elaborate on any challenges you encountered in designing and animating this short film? How did you address them?

Lynx095: I am still learning, so almost everything was a challenge. The car model provided by Polygoniq as a condition to be used in the animation is the very first rigged model I have ever worked with. This project was also the first time I have used object constraints, path animation, shape keys, compositing, or explosion effects for when the car crashes into the giant cell phone. For an interesting example, all my scenes that used rigid body physics kept crashing when rendering frame 2. To solve this problem I extended the length of the animation to give my moving objects more time to settle into the scene. Then I restarted the render from frame 10 and cut the excess time from the beginning of each scene.

Fox Renderfarm: Can you describe a particularly memorable moment or breakthrough in the project's development?

Lynx095: The biggest breakthrough I had in this project was at the beginning when I checked my discord for notifications and noticed the announcement for this challenge in the Polygoniq channel. I immediately started getting all these crazy ideas, which convinced me to participate in the challenge in the first place. After that, my concept for the animation hasn’t changed much. The only creative decisions I had to make later were which ideas to cut to fit into the 1-minute limit for animation length. I have a “deleted scene” which still felt too fast at 12 seconds, so instead of slowing it down to make it work, I decided to cut it entirely and incorporate some of its elements into the other scenes.

Still image from my deleted scene © Lynx095

Fox Renderfarm: Are there any particular scenes in your work that you are particularly proud of or that viewers might overlook at first glance?

Lynx095: I’m most proud of scene number 4, the one where the car is being chased by forks. It has almost 2000 individual 3D objects, many of which have active physics properties. To have continuous slides for the marbles to roll on and the car to drive on, I couldn’t rely on any kind of random scatter system for help, I had to place everything manually. I felt like my brain would burst by the time I finished the scene.

As for the things viewers might not notice, I would like to direct your attention to the very last scene - the bedroom - where I tried to incorporate various elements from the dream. For example, the toy cubes on the carpet are not only the same as in the dream, they appear in the same order as the colors of the car in the animation - first blue, then yellow, then red. And the vines from the forest scenes, in the beginning, appear again as the plant on the nightstand. For that, I downloaded a free potted plant model from the blender kit, deleted the plant, and replaced it with my own vines.

Car chase scene overview © Lynx095

Fox Renderfarm: Could you share your experience using Fox Renderfarm's cloud rendering services for your projects? In what specific ways has Fox Renderfarm helped you with your projects? Have you found it to be useful and has it saved you significant time?

Lynx095: I haven’t yet used Fox Renderfarm, nor any other render farm, but I’m looking forward to using your services in the future.

Fox Renderfarm: Are there any other projects that you are currently working on that you would like to share with us?

Lynx095: My success in this challenge has inspired me to finally try to make the leap from hobbyist to professional when it comes to 3D modeling and animation. Currently, I’m finishing my numerous works in progress and polishing my older projects to have some kind of a presentable portfolio.

Fox Renderfarm: Could you share any insights or lessons you gained from creating this award-winning animation, particularly in terms of exploring the intersection of dreams, surrealism, and animation?

Lynx095: Most importantly I feel like my skills have at least doubled while working on this project. And when it comes to this particular style, it’s definitely something I want to pursue further. What fascinates me about 3D art is that you can create anything from your imagination and make it look basically photorealistic. And I think that this combination of realism and absurdity is something that should be explored more.

Thanks again to Lynx095 for accepting our interview! Wishing new heights in you and your team’s professional career!

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