Pedro Scherz, a 3D artist and generalist from Southeast Brazil, made his mark by securing 5th place in the highly acclaimed Kinetic Rush Challenge by pwnisher. Pedro's artistic voyage began in his childhood years, eventually garnering depth and dimension during his architectural and art direction studies. He has since then, carved a distinct niche in the industry, known not only for his technical finesse but also for his ability to encapsulate emotional connections. As we delve into this exclusive interview with Fox Renderfarm, a leading cloud rendering services provider and render farm in the industry, let's uncover Pedro's creative process and the sparks that ignite his artistry.
Fox Renderfarm: Hi Pedro! We are honored to have you here! Please introduce yourself first to our readers.
Pedro: Hello! I am so grateful for this, thank you for having me. I’m Pedro, a 3D artist and generalist based in Southeast Brazil.
Fox Renderfarm: Congratulations on winning 5th place in the Kinetic Rush Challenge! Can you tell us about your journey leading up to this achievement? What inspired you to participate in the challenge?
Pedro: Thank you! Of course. Well, I’ve played with CG ever since I was a little kid, but I only started to take it seriously in College. I studied architecture and art direction and did mostly archviz in the beginning. Later on, I graduated and started working as a 3D freelancer for clients all over the world. I have followed Clinton Jones “pwnisher” ever since his Corridor Digital days and that’s how I found out about the challenges. I wasn’t going to participate in this one, but I thought it could be a good opportunity to improve my workflow and train my creativity.
Fox Renderfarm: In the context of 'Kinetic Rush,' what particular elements or concepts motivated you to develop your piece? How did you link your idea to the overarching theme?
Pedro: I always take a good amount of time to brainstorm before committing to an idea. I started 4 other blockings and took them pretty far, but ended up giving them up after 8 days of work because I couldn’t connect to them emotionally. Then came this one, I thought about the pressure of everyday work, struggles with time, and work-life balance. And of course, the “Rush” part was there right away with the backward-running clocks, the character’s sense of time was being contaminated by his anxiety.
Animation Progression
Fox Renderfarm: What led you to feature the transition of this scene repeatedly, and what message do you hope audiences will take away from your project?
Pedro: Well, we only have 126 frames or 5.25 seconds, and although these animations were meant to be smaller parts of a whole, I wanted to make something that stands on its own. I cheated a little bit I guess. I made an animation that works best if you play it over and over again which I knew the judges would have to do in order to decide, so I made a loop about a repetitive routine. I would say the message would be to treat themselves with a bit more love, so don’t live inside your work and end up forgetting why you’re doing it in the first place, there is more to life than this.
Labor of love © Pedro Scherz
Fox Renderfarm: Can you share with us the creation process of your work? How did you manage the workflow from the initial concept to the final render?
Pedro: I had an abstraction in my head of the character going through many different environments and changing clothing. The first thing I did was a block-out, which is a rough 3D layout of the environments and early lighting.
First image © Pedro Scherz
Office blocking © Pedro Scherz
Office mid production © Pedro Scherz
Final scene © Pedro Scherz
After that I just kept developing the different sets and playing with the lights, until I ended up with a final look, then I split the scenes to save memory and hit the big Fox Renderfarm button.
Fox Renderfarm: Were there any specific artistic choices or animation techniques that you experimented with for this project?
Pedro: There is one artistic choice I made which was very unique to this. I skewed all the environment geometry forward to compensate for the perspective distortion of the camera.
Original perspective © Pedro Scherz
Corrected perspective © Pedro Scherz
Section of the skewed environment © Pedro Scherz
The resulting effect, from the point of view of the camera, is what you would call “one-point perspective” since all horizontal and vertical lines are orthogonal, and you only feel the perspective of the set through the depth, which makes the scene seem more distant and therefore impersonal.
Fox Renderfarm: How did you approach the lighting and color palette to enhance the mood of the scene?
Pedro: The palette was there from the very beginning, I wanted there to be a cycle of colors changing according to the set. I chose pink for the dream, I wanted the clouds to feel like cotton candy. Dark blue for the living room, to make it a little sadder and darker, and green for the office. There’s no particular reason behind the green, I just thought it would look best.
Fox Renderfarm: What challenges did you face while working on this project, and how did you overcome them?
Pedro: I spent about 40% of the time trying to get the scenes to render on my computer, using Eevee, which is a rasterized render engine. It was just not working out. I was struggling with memory issues, slow playback, missing shadows and volumes, and I even thought about giving up. But I decided to give Fox Renderfarm a try, I thought it would be too expensive, but I was wrong, it worked out perfectly. It turns out all that hard work I did in optimization for Eevee transferred perfectly to the Raytracing engine. After that, I just did some test renders and I was done.
Fox Renderfarm: What has been the most rewarding part of participating in the Kinetic Rush Challenge so far?
Pedro: I think the most rewarding part is discovering how much can be done with such little time and tools， and also seeing different artists giving their own take on the template and exchanging tips. It is a challenge that doesn’t feel like a competition, but rather a collaborative film.
Fox Renderfarm: Have you tried or heard about our render farm services before? What is your impression of our cloud rendering services?
Pedro: I had heard of Fox Renderfarm before, from many other artists that have used it, but this is my first time using it. I was very impressed with the reliability and good customer service. I actually solved a lot of optimization issues on my scenes just by talking with the team and reading the render logs.
Fox Renderfarm: What advice would you offer to aspiring 3D artists entering competitions like Kinetic Rush?
Pedro:
Three things:
- Know your constraints. Time is short, so don’t try to play too outside of your strengths.
- Don’t get too attached to an idea. Your winning idea might find you 3 ideas ahead. (Mine took 4 restarts)
- Clear your head, and take a walk, the art you’re making is likely about what’s outside your screens.
- Break the rules.
Pedro’s Social Media:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/congartes/
- Artstation: https://pedroscherz.artstation.com/
