Reimagining Maxon’s Booth Experience How 3D artist Mattey created a surreal yet relatable lineup of characters that captures the breadth of talent within the Maxon community.

The works of Paris-based 3D artist Mathieu Le Berre, a.k.a. Mattey, caught Maxon’s eye for their distinct style and imaginative feel. That’s why we commissioned him and his team to reimagine one of his previous projects to serve as a large-scale mural for the Maxon IBC booth and a 30-second animation, both in line with our brand tagline: Dream it. Make it. The idea was to feature characters that represent the wide range of users who rely on Maxon tools every day, from VFX and games artists to motion designers, architects, editors, medical illustrators, and more.

We spoke with Mattey about his work on the project and his animation experience.

I’ve always enjoyed working with simple shapes and focusing on art direction, colors, and the overall mood of my animations and illustrations. For this project, I had the chance to design several characters, each more fun and creative than the last.

I followed the same process I usually do and started with quick, simple sketches to define the general structure. Thanks to all the projects and characters I’ve created over the years, this workflow has become smoother and faster.

Each character was supposed to represent a specific role within the design or animation field, which made the creative process even more natural and enjoyable. It was easy to find inspiration by thinking about each character’s skill or personality; the ideas came quickly during sketching, even before jumping into 3D.

Before creating a still image, I started by setting up the composition directly in Cinema 4D using basic shapes. It helped avoid surprises and saved time. This way, I could instantly see if the layout worked.

Then, I moved on to defining the lighting, materials, and overall artistic direction of the scene. Once those elements were locked in, I already had a solid foundation for animation, since most of the environment was already built. After completing the storyboard, I just applied the same process and started animating.

Since I like to work with simple forms, the Volume Builder is one of my go-to modeling tools. It’s super intuitive for building stylized characters. You just start with basic primitives, combine them, and refine the details with Volume Builder and Boolean.

Once the structure felt right, I used Cinema 4D’s Remesher to keep the file lightweight and clean up the topology. I finished things off using the sculpting tools in Cinema 4D to fine-tune the shapes one last time.

Redshift is what really brought everything to life during rendering. The precision and flexibility it offers for lighting were essential to give each character its own distinct glow within the same scene. It also allowed for detailed texturing using gradients and subtle surface details that responded beautifully to global illumination, resulting in a clean yet warm, colorful aesthetic.

The secret was simply to respect every step of the process - from sketching and storyboarding to composition, modeling, lighting, and texturing. If you stay organized, you move much faster and avoid losing time on unnecessary revisions.

Plus, this is a style I’ve been refining for years, so experience helped me streamline the workflow and keep things efficient without sacrificing quality.

Another thing that really helped was getting to collaborate with Adrobski on the music. Adrobski is incredibly smart and intuitive when it comes to sound. He knows exactly how to make each sound emphasize and elevate the animation.

In addition to being a talented musician, he also creates his own sound design from scratch, which adds a lot of authenticity. I just give him a few directions, and he works his magic — it’s always spot on.

One of the projects I’m most proud of is my “36 Days of Type – Astrologia Series”, because that’s when I really started to develop my own style and artistic direction. I basically lived inside Cinema 4D for 36 straight days, which taught me how to work fast, stay consistent, and handle pressure while creating over 36 illustrations and animations. Of course I’m also really proud of the Maxon project and my illustration work for Microsoft Office 365, where I had a lot of creative freedom and a final result I’m genuinely happy with.

Right now, I want to push my animation style even further by blending a “cute” aesthetic with something more realistic. I’m currently working on an animation about the passage of time and how it affects our environment, something I’m really looking forward to sharing soon.