Winning a Pwnisher challenge requires more than just technical skill; it demands a story told in four seconds. For Ted Heemskerk, that story involved a lumberjack swinging to a rigid 120 BPM tempo and a pair of squirrels defending their "EIKEL." In this exclusive interview, Ted walks Fox Renderfarm through his experimental workflow—combining Marvelous Designer clothing scans, a Rokoko face rig, and a surprising amount of real-world objects (matchboxes, tin cans, and napkins) to build a believable forest. He also shares why Fox Renderfarm, the industry’s top cloud rendering services provider and render farm, was his "saving grace" during crunch time and how new artists can break into the Top 100.
Fox Renderfarm: Hi Ted! We are honored to have you here! Please introduce yourself to our readers.
Ted: Thanks for having me! My name is Ted Heemskerk, and I’m a 3D artist from the Netherlands. I’ve always been interested in films and animations since I was young. As a kid, I used to make animations in Microsoft PowerPoint. I didn’t know any professional animation software back then. When I was 15, I went to film school. And after that, I studied animation at the University of the Arts Utrecht. In recent years, I have specialized in character animation for films and commercials. However, I enjoy all other aspects of filmmaking and 3D animation almost as much as character animation.
Fox Renderfarm: Congratulations on winning 3rd place in the DRÆM SEQUENCE Challenge. Can you briefly introduce your project and explain how you tackle the theme?
Ted: Thanks a lot! My project is about two squirrels who protect their tree from a lumberjack. I called this project: “EIKEL.” The word eikel has two meanings in Dutch. It’s a translation for the word acorn, but it is also a mild swear word that you can say to someone who is doing something you don’t like. So I think this name is really fitting, in the case of the squirrels.
I got the idea for this project when I was thinking about jobs or actions that have repetitive motions. For the challenge, we had to make an animation on a specific tempo, and it felt a bit more natural to animate something that already has a repetitive motion. This is clearly the case with a lumberjack who is chopping down a tree. We also had to add a specific motion to the camera. One of those specific camera moves was a 90-degree turn. I really liked that movement because I could use it to reveal a new perspective in my scene. That was the moment when I came up with the idea to put squirrels in the tree. Now I have two different perspectives from two different beings. I tried to create a kind of Tom and Jerry situation. Just two characters that are both different species who just try to do their job or try to live their life, but are clashing with each other while doing that.
Fox Renderfarm: Could you share the creation process for your work? What software did you use, and how long did it take you? (Please attach any process photos you have:))
Ted: I used the first five days to develop an idea. I always have the urge to start making things in 3D software as soon as possible, but I've learned that it is really important to take your time with an idea. After I came up with the idea. I started blocking my scene in Blender. I didn’t use a lot of references in the beginning. I just wanted all the necessary objects first, and would focus on the overall vibe later.
Blender wasn’t the only software that I used. I also used Marvelous Designer to design the clothes. I really like Marvelous Designer because it almost feels like you are creating clothes the same way as how it works in reality. This gave me an idea that I wanted to try out for this challenge. The clothes of the lumberjack came from pictures I took of my own clothes. I wanted to try this because I realized that Marvelous Designer uses patterns for their 3D clothing that are the same as the patterns in real clothing. So I wanted to see if I could take pictures of my real clothes and place them as a texture on top of the pattern of the 3D clothes. It turned out pretty well, and it was really fun to do!
Fox Renderfarm: You chose to include your own face in the render—what inspired that decision? Did it come with any unexpected challenges?
Ted: I like to try to put a lot of personality into my work. For many projects, I bring things from my own environment into my work. This helps to keep the project feeling real and grounded in some sort of way, and makes it easier for me to connect with the world and characters that I’m creating. I hope that other people will feel that too.
On the previous challenge, I already used a 3D scan of myself for one of the characters. This was just a still image that couldn't show expressions on the face. It was not a big problem because you would only see the back of the character. But this time I wanted to make the face much clearer to the camera. So I couldn’t get away with a simple image of a face. Luckily, I got my brand new face rig from Rokoko. This is mainly used to capture data from your face, so you can link it to a digital face rig. I used this technique quite a few times on some cartoony characters. But this time I wanted to use it for a real-looking face. I wanted to preserve as much detail as possible, so I thought it would be fun to use the face rig to film my entire face and use that footage for my character.
In the beginning, I didn’t exactly know what I was doing. It was a little bit of an experiment. I also wanted to use this challenge to learn and try new things, so this was a good opportunity. First, I tried to put that footage onto a basic human head as a basic texture. It was not the kind of result that I wanted. It looked a bit like a balloon with a weird face stuck onto it. Later, I used a 3D scan of my head and placed the moving texture of my face on top of it. Now the shape of the face was way more accurate. It still looked a bit uncanny, but luckily, the rest of my scene also felt a bit exaggerated and uncanny, so it kind of matched the overall style. There were a few moments in the scene where I still didn’t like the face. It felt too uncanny compared to the rest of the scene. What really helped was to make the character constantly moving. This way, you wouldn’t be able to see all the weird details in the face. I am quite happy with how it turned out. Although I think it still looks quite uncanny. Maybe I can play with the uncanny look of the face in future projects.
Fox Renderfarm: How did this challenge push your skills in a new direction compared to your previous work? Were there any unexpected obstacles when creating a beat-synced visual?
Ted: For this project, I wanted to focus a bit more on the small details. I also wanted to do this for the last challenge, but I quickly realized that it wouldn’t be necessary. Everything went so fast there that you wouldn’t even notice the details. But for this challenge, it was completely different.
I wanted to fill the inside of the tree with a lot of stuff. It had to feel like there was really something living inside the tree. It would also help to give the squirrels some personality and believability. The objects in the tree also had to make a bit of sense. So I used a matchbox as a table. I also used a tin can as a flowerpot. These are objects that you would find next to a campfire in the woods. For the rug, I used a napkin that you always see in pancake restaurants in the Dutch forests. So that also made a bit of sense.
For the last few months, I have had a small obsession with capturing real-life details and bringing that to my 3D work. I do this by 3D scanning objects, for example. I also take pictures and use them as a texture. I wanted to do this for this project, too. The matchbox and the napkin are among the objects that I found. The fox also came from a photo I took during a vacation. There are still a lot of objects in the scene that I took from different 3D websites.
The animation of the lumberjack was kind of a challenge. I had to animate him on the given beat. This beat was at 120 bpm, so he had to swing his axe unnaturally fast. To fix this, I made all the other animations and movements a bit more exaggerated. Now the movement of the swinging axe feels way more cohesive with the rest of the movements. Luckily, I’m a big fan of exaggerated movements. The animation of the lumberjack still felt a bit too robotic and repetitive. This happened because it had to constantly hit the beat. I tried to make the movement a bit more natural by breaking the repetitive motion, but then you wouldn’t be able to notice it when he hits the beat. To bring back that hit, I added a small light blink on top of the axe at the exact moment when the beat hits.
Fox Renderfarm: How did Fox Renderfarm handle this project for you? And what keeps bringing you back to us for your renders?
Ted: Fox Renderfarm really saved me during this challenge. I have a decent pc, but if I had chosen to render this project on my own pc, it would have taken a lot of hours. I was also busy with other projects during the month of the competition. So I needed every hour that I could spend on the competition that month. It was very nice to be able to work on the competition until the very end of the month, and then send it to Fox Renderfarm at the last moment, knowing that I would receive the render in time to submit it before the deadline.
That probably would have been very tricky and a bit stressful if I had done it without Fox Renderfarm.
Fox Renderfarm: From back-to-back Top 5 finishes to now, what lessons have you learned that could help an artist aiming for their first Top 100 spot in pwnisher’s challenges?
Ted: I think the first thing my head registers at the moment that I’m watching a render from the challenge is the lighting and the colors. So that always has a high priority for me to focus on. Animation and motion are the next things that my head registers, I think. So that has a high priority for me too.
I think that story also plays a very important role. It can be hard to create a story that is only 4 seconds long, but a story can be very simple. I always ask myself, what does the viewer know at the end of my render that they didn’t know at the beginning of my render?
For me, personality is very important. I always try to add something from my personal experiences. Sometimes the locations are based on places that I visit a lot. I try to use things from my childhood memories. A lot of characters and objects in my work are based on things out of my own environment. When you make your work personal, it will always be unique, because everyone is different. That is also what I love about the challenges. You can see so many different ideas and perspectives in everyone’s work. It’s like traveling through somebody else's mind every 4 seconds.
Ted’s Social Media
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ted.heemskerk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-heemskerk-38a6b02b8/
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@tedheemskerk?si=7-Uc_TnQpHrTiMmR
TikTok: https: //www.tiktok.com/@animeerbeer?_t=ZG-8zkzbhFfctl&_r=1
