Throughout the past year, in between projects, Our team at MadMicrobe got the idea to create a new custom showreel. We chose to approach this reel as a series of cohesive custom built shots rather than the typical batch of unrelated clips of past work, which is how a showreel is usually presented. We wanted to create this peice with a nod to films like Inner Space or Fantastic Voyage, ie: a journey through various systems and processes in the human body at a microscopic and sometimes molecular level, and present the reel as if it were the opening title sequence to a fictional film or tv series.
One of the challenges we were faced with after deciding to approach this as a title sequence was what/who would the content of the credits be? We soon realized that we had about 25 shots to create on-screen credits for and it would be difficult to invent something for each shot. After trying a few things we decided we would simply research what scientists were responsible for the discoveries of the elements (cells, molecules, tissue, technology) showcased in each shot. We then thought this could be a fun puzzle for people to figure out by googling the names on their own. We also knew that the more astute science professionals and geeks alike might recognize the names and their associations to the science shown.
The result is WONDERS WITHIN, which we're pleased to share with you below.
The shots were all mostly custom built, by Creative Director, Joel Dubin or in some cases were models that purchased and customized. Everything was created, rigged, lit, textured, and animated with Cinema 4D, using the Physical Renderer for most shots and a few shots rendered using the Arnold render engine, C4DtoA. Each shot got quite a bit of post work in After Effects, and tons of color correction. Joel: "I'm a sucker for rich color contrast".
Joel continues: "I am inspired by contemporary film title sequence, so I did quite a bit of research of various typography treatments using resources like Art of theTitle and others, as well as different motion graphics techniques. Due to time constraints as well as not wanting the piece to become too visually busy, I decided to go with a stark clean typography approach and hold back on things like 3D tracking layering 2D graphic element and instead keep things simple".
Thanks for looking!
