Inverted Gravitation

Dan is studying digital media design at the Billy Blue College in Sydney, Australia. An important part of this program of study is motion graphics. The starting point and inspiration for 'Negative Mass' was a short briefing, which set forth that students had to create and realize a music video or title sequence for a television series. Dan, who leaned toward the idea of creating a title sequence, first imagined what it could look like: The title would have to hint at the show's concept in order to spark the viewer's interest - but not provide too many details. 'Negative Mass' was the title of the show, which only existed in Dan's imagination and for which he created a title sequence using Cinema 4D.

The show's story line - which isn't meant to be logical but rather serves as a basis for spectacular imagery - revolved around a weakening gravitational force on Earth. This story line made it possible for Dan to use features in Cinema 4D for his animations that he had only used sparingly in the past. "There was no getting around using Dynamics to create a convincing effect of a weakening gravitational force," explains Dan. "Previously I had only used these tools every now and then but for this project they were an essential part of at least half of the animations I created. I had to figure out how to create these animations, how to cache them and how to bake them in the end."

Since this project closely resembled a real-world project, Dan integrated other programs and plugins in his pipeline in order to gain additional useful skills. He used the World Machine tool to create the landscapes, which he imported into Cinema 4D. The trees and boulders strewn throughout the scene were created using the Forrester plugin for Cinema 4D. The Forrester plugin includes a scattering module with which the trees and rocks can be dispersed across surfaces using an algorithm.

What makes this short film so magical is Dynamics, which Dan used to simulate weightlessness. The final scenes were rendered using Octane and fitting music by Bryan Barcinas was added.

The title sequence 'Negative Mass' thrives from the surreal imagery that Dan Braga created using Cinema 4D and a lot of imagination. "Cinema 4D's intuitive interface is like a 3D sandbox that invites you to play around with the ideas you have. With Cinema 4D you don't have to conquer a mountain of technological challenges before achieving spectacular results," says Dan about his experience with Cinema 4D!