The first release taken from Wilderness the third album from brother/sister twosome Hundreds, Lars Nagler’s computer animated music video What Remains, delivers an abstract visual feast as it explores the wonders of an alien macro-world. We grabbed Lars for a speedy chat to discover how he was able to complete such a render intense project within a tight deadline.
Where did you draw inspiration from for the abstract forms of What Remains?
Mainly the inspiration comes from nearly everything I’ve liked since I started to think and to think free. I love to discover artists like Derek Jarman, Tarkowsky, Werner Herzog (documentaries), Joel-Peter Witkin, Coil, Simon Fisher Turner, paintings, books, music and much, much more… all this together creates a unique life-feeling and in the end an influence of my Work.
Clearly this was a heavily digital project. How were the scenes executed?
Most scene-buildups inside Cinema4D start with DEM-Earth environments, RDT-textures, and HDRI lighting. As for the specific animation processes, everything is rendered with Octane with final compositing done with After Effects, all on a fully equipped Mac Pro. It was very special for balancing time correctly between scene work and render time.
What impact did the 7 week production timeframe have on your approach to such a render heavy project?
The main limitation was that it left no time for a storyboard/treatment. If I had had more time, the scenes would have become more complete/wider, with more details. Currently, the scenes are all very tight and limited.
What’s next?
Unfortunately, I mainly have to work on uninspiring projects to make money… š …but next will be a kind of trailer with similar natural environments for a big German ambient/new age artist.
