A Winner of Pwnisher's Latest Challenge Breaks Down His Submission

Introduction

Hi, my name is Ted Heemskerk, and I'm a 3D artist from the Netherlands. I've been doing 3D for 8 years now, but my passion for film and animation already started when I was 7 years old. Back then, I often made up stories in my head and really wanted to put those stories on the screen. So, I started making animations in Microsoft PowerPoint. I quickly realized that I wanted to become a filmmaker, so I went to film school. There, I learned to use real editing and animation software.

I liked every aspect of filmmaking and really wanted to learn everything. As soon as the school day was over, me and my friends grabbed a bunch of cameras and started making our own short films and videos. They didn't look great in the beginning, but it definitely was the best learning experience I could have. 

During that study, I was able to work on some 3D projects for some big museums in the Netherlands, such as Naturalis, where I brought extinct animals to life. This really got me deeper into 3D animation. It was also a good way to get to know more people from the Dutch animation industry.

I eventually got the chance to work as a character animator on a Dutch animated feature film called Panda Bear in Africa. This really boosted my animation skills. I thought that I knew a thing or two about animation, but when I started working on that film, I realized that there was so much more to learn. When I started working on my first facial animation, they gave me thirteen pages of text and images on how to make a character blink. Thirteen pages for just a blink! That was really fascinating to me. Imagine how many pages you need to make a character jump... That could take up a whole library. At that moment, I knew that character animation would become my favorite part of 3D.

After that project, I started working on my graduation movie. I graduated at the end of 2024. Now I'm working as a freelance 3D Artist, hoping to roll deeper and deeper into the film industry.

Participating in Pwnisher's Rampage Rally 3D Challenge

This is the second time that I participated. I also did the previous challenge. For that previous challenge, I tried to make something that was way different than what I usually make. It was nice, but I didn't feel connected to my submission. So this time, I decided to stay a bit closer to myself and make something that was more my usual style.

A lot of my inspiration comes from the places I visit or the place that I live in. I like to capture the world around me and try to make something unique out of that. It's also a good way to get reference material, because you can literally walk through your reference and feel the atmosphere, or see the little details.

The place where I live is very flat and minimal. It's a very typical Dutch landscape. For me, it really feels like an empty canvas. That's why I like to capture this landscape. The moment I put those pictures onto my computer, I can turn this empty canvas into my own interpretation. I like to make an exaggerated version of reality. Not only the landscape, but also the motion and acting of the characters in it.

For the characters, I also wanted to use my surroundings. So I took some pictures of my dog and placed them on a 3D model. For the other character, I used a 3D scan of myself. This really helped to keep the animation personal.

After brainstorming about the characters and backgrounds, I decided it was time to think about the story. I didn't come up with the story immediately. I got the idea when I was playing with some different skies for my scene. I really liked the dark and stormy skies. It gave me the idea to do something with a tornado. The main character could jump into the tornado to save something. Then it would really justify the jump that was in the challenge template.

What I liked about the template is that you had to reveal the world you created. You couldn't see the world right at the beginning, because it got blocked by the big ramp. I replaced the ramp with a big dike because I wanted to add some personal nostalgic memories to this part of the animation. When I was a little kid, my grandparents had a sailboat. I could spend weeks on the sailboat, sailing through the waters of the Netherlands. Most of the time, those waters were surrounded by big dikes. When I looked at the dikes, I sometimes could see red roofs peeking out just above the dike. Those roofs were from the cozy little villages that were hiding behind the dikes. I wanted to use the template to reveal a small village that was hiding behind the dike, just like it did in my memories.

The Modeling Pipeline

My whole animation is made in Blender, except for some cloth simulation. I didn't use any add-ons or plugins.

The bike is one of the few things I got from the internet. After I placed both of the characters into the bike, I started making the houses. Meanwhile, I collected and photographed pictures of some houses in the area where I live. I took pictures of the front and the side of the buildings. I kept the shape and the topology of the houses pretty simple. Just some square-shaped walls and roofs, so it would be easier to place the pictures of the houses on top of them. I made six different buildings. The most challenging part was probably finding the right buildings while I was shooting pictures. I didn't want to use buildings that had a lot of shadows on the walls. So I had to shoot at a moment when the sun was already setting. Those days with a lot of overcast clouds were also perfect for shooting.

For the characters, I used a different approach to model and texture them. The dog was made by projecting dog pictures onto a dog model with a UV project modifier. I had to make a model that had the same proportions and shape as the dog in the pictures. For the other character, I used a 3D scan of myself. It was made with my iPhone while using a free app called Scaniverse. I ended up remodeling and retexturing some important body parts that had to move a lot. 3D scans can have a dense mesh, so I tried to avoid the use of 3D scans as much as possible.

The guy on the motorcycle still felt a bit stiff after I animated him. I couldn't feel the action and chaos when I looked at him. So I thought it would be great to go to Marvelous Designer to make some clothes that flutter in the wind. I turned the wind simulation to the point where the clothes almost flew away from the body. It was a bit of a challenge to find the right direction for the wind. The clothes had to flutter into a specific direction and angle to really emphasize the speed and motion of the characters. It became a very important part of selling the chaos of the whole animation. 

Texturing

The texturing was one of the most fun parts of the process. I was spending a lot of time walking through the landscapes to take pictures of everything. I ended up with a lot of great pictures of different materials, plants, and objects. So I took some of those pictures and used them in my scene. A lot of the greenery and foliage consists mainly of cut-out images of plants I found along the way. The trees were photographed during overcast days, so the background would be completely white against the dark trees. I inverted the color of those pictures, so I could use them as an alpha matte to remove the background from the tree.

Some of the objects were just textured with PBR textures. Texturing in Blender is fine. It's not perfect, but it does the job. I had to mix different shaders by using a mix shader node and adjust them with masks and blending modes. The textures had to look very dirty because of the stormy weather. So I painted a lot of dirt spots and wet spots on the surface. Luckily, I could look at my pictures as a reference to get an idea of how different materials look under different circumstances.

Rendering & VFX

For me, the sky was one of the most important parts of the scene. Because it was the biggest and most influential light source. Almost all of the light comes from the bright right corner. Another important light source in my scene is the light that comes from the small village. I tried to keep it simple by only using two main light sources in my scene. I only had to add some extra lights on buildings that would emphasize the lights coming from the village or the bright sky on the right. I wanted the characters and the bike to stand out against the background. They sometimes disappeared a bit in the shadow of the tornado. So I attached some Rim Lights to the characters so they were in constant light. The head of the dog was pretty dark, so he needed some extra lighting on the head too. He also needed some extra Rim Lights, so his head would be more visible against the dark clothes of the other character. I also made the bridge a bit lighter, so it would be easier to see where the main characters would go.

The tornado is quite simple. First, I wanted to make a big simulation, but I ended up using a volumetric cube to reduce time. The cube was shaped into a cone by using Math nodes and Map Range nodes. I added a noise texture and animated it. I also added three different particle systems to make all the debris fly around. Those three particle systems all had different sizes of debris. The bigger pieces of debris were closer to the tornado, while the smaller pieces were way more spread out. The tornado would become a big dark silhouette, so it didn't need a lot of detail.

I did a lot of the post-production in a very early stage of the process. My animation contained a big fish eye effect, so it was important for me to see that right in the beginning. That way, I knew which parts would be visible in the camera and which parts would disappear due to the lens effects. This helped me to avoid spending time on objects that would end up being outside of the screen. I also curved the ground of my whole scene to emphasize the fish-eye effect.

It probably took 170 hours to make this animation. Then I had to render it for another 30 hours. I learned a lot from making this animation, but it was also really challenging sometimes.

What really helped me during this challenge was prioritizing my stronger points and the aspects that are the most fun for me to do. For example, I really like animation and movement. So I wanted to make something where this would be the dominant aspect of the whole animation.

I think it is very important to think about what you want to achieve before starting this challenge. I used the previous challenge to learn to work with some new styles. For this challenge, I really wanted to make something that combines all my stronger points with my personal interests. It really helped me to develop my own style and workflow a bit further.

This challenge is also great for people who want to learn a new 3D skill. Even people who have never touched 3D software can join this challenge. It is a really fun way to challenge yourself to learn new things or to try to improve your skills! For me, this challenge is also really motivating, because you do it together with thousands of people. A lot of them are really helpful when you ask them for help.

Conclusion

I think it's really important that these kinds of contests exist. Everybody can join this contest for free and have fun while developing themselves. That's mainly because of sponsors like XPPen. The contest and the sponsors are also helping to let artists be seen by the rest of the world. I got a lot of great connections out of the contest and discovered a lot of new artists.

It can also be motivating to join a contest with such amazing prizes as the XPPen tablets. Those prizes are not only fun to win, but they can really help people grow as an artist. I was using a simple drawing tablet without a screen for six years. It had its limitations, but it did the job for me. When I got my new drawing tablet, I immediately discovered that it was going to improve my workflow a lot! I can also dive a lot deeper into drawing. That is something that I'm definitely going to use in my future projects.

Thanks a lot for reading! Feel free to reach out to me on social media if you have any questions, or if you want to talk about 3D! I'm mostly active on Instagram.

Ted Heemskerk, 3D Animator

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie