The Wanderer is my take on the giant-impact hypothesis: a collision event between Theia (ancient planet) and Gaia (proto-earth) that is thought to have birthed the moon and changed the Earth to be as we know it today.
This film is an ode to the moon as our earth’s oldest companion.
The visuals are paired with Eden Ahbez’ poem “La Mar’ (The Sea). In The Wanderer I’ve brought together what I think the moon inspires, a coming together of science and poetry, biology and history, nature and art.
Credits
Direction and Animation
Savva Tsekmes
Sound Design / Mixing / Mastering
Redhorse Audio
Colourist
Edel Rafferty
“La Mar” performed by Eden Ahbez Licensed
courtesy of Warner Music Australia Pty Limited
Special Thanks
Aysha Zackariya and Simon Bronson
The Wanderer took roughly a year to produce alongside full-time work. Since I worked on the 3D visuals independently, I utilised a few techniques and resources to make my workflow more efficient.
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Redshift
I used Redshift to render all shots. GPU rendering has become increasingly common. What used to take hours on a render farm, is taking half that on a couple of graphics cards.
Projection mapping
One technique I used was projection mapping of images to create backgrounds. I projected images from royalty free sites such as Pexels onto low poly geometry for certain shots.
X-particles
I used X-particles, arguably the best particle system for Cinema 4D, to simulate grains, water & smoke. In particular some of the newer x-particle systems including grains, xpSplash/xpSheeter and Explosia.
Shots that did not make the cut...
Shots that did!