Antfood And Foam Studio Bring The Ordinary To Life In Richly Imagined Short Film Influencers

Award-winning visual trend lab and brand image consultancy foam Studio was commissioned to unveil and highlight the advanced features and streamlined workflows of the next evolution of Cinema 4D – a breakthrough version of MAXON’s iconic design and animation software, which was published earlier this month. Inspired by animism – the belief in supernatural power that organized and animates all material in universe, simple Japanese design and the history of digital synthesis, the result is the short film “Influencers”.

“At foam Studio, we are lured in most by things that are often overlooked,” says the collective. “This curiosity is the root of our work, and our inspiration for this film. “Influencers” is about drawing out the intrigue in the Everyday and allowing it to humbly influence the world around us. For us it’s a celebration of the Creative Process.”

Sonic soul

The international teams of Antfood Amsterdam and New York composed music, sound design, voices and ambiences to create a rich sonic world around foam’s stellar visuals. Antfood produced ambiences that remind the listener of real-world environments and room tone, but are in fact synthetic, processed soundscapes, a collection of 1s and 0s. They also set out to give the objects a voice and character that develops as they come to life.

“We synthesized most of the sound design by aiming to somehow resemble the real world” says Pedro Botsaris, Creative Director and Managing Partner at Antfood Amsterdam. “Each scene has its own unique soundscape, and we approached every object as having their unique sonic persona, or sonic soul. As the animation progresses and the objects begin wielding great influence over their environments the soundscapes become more and more dense and rebellious.”

Creativity at the highest level

foam Studio is a tightly knit studio of unique and established directors represented by Friends Electric for commercial work in both the US and UK. foam Studio works directly with brands to develop bespoke key visual design concepts and stories, shaping contemporary brand image culture that points far beyond the conventional themes. Cinema 4D is the perfect companion to this way of seeing and experiencing the world and enabled foam Studio to translate this visually. It encouraged a design-centric and playful exploration, enticing foam to take advantage of any new angles and unique perspectives that arise unexpectedly as they create.

“With access to Maxon’s Cinema 4D R20 prior to its release, we had the pleasure of putting its new features through their paces,” the foam team states. “The newly implemented Fields and Volume Mesher, together with MAXON’s tireless tweaking and improvement, makes Cinema 4D Release 20 a powerful and well-rounded bundle to express creativity at the highest level possible.”

Release 20 introduces high-end features for VFX and motion graphics artists including node-based materials, volume modeling, robust CAD import and a dramatic evolution of the MoGraph toolset. MAXON debuted Cinema 4D R20 live and online (C4DLive.com) at the SIGGRAPH 2018 convention in August 2018, in Vancouver, Canada