Yanis from ethikdesign was nice enough to make a behind the scenes video for his winning Five Second Project. All these behind the scenes videos are great to watch and learn from. We would love to make this a permanent part of the Five Second Projects as long as artists want to make more of these helpful breakdown videos.

Update

We wanted to know a little bit more about Yanis, so we asked him a few questions regarding his workflow and the process for creating his winning piece.

Where do you work? What is your title? Tell us about what you do at your company.

My name is Yanis I am 28 years old. After my studies of Art & Graphics Design, I worked for various design studios and music labels. In early 2008, I created ethikdesign, a Multimedia & Graphic Studio based in Grenoble (France), where I’ve worked with many different clients, nationally and internationally.

How did you come up with your concept for the Sandcastle Five Second Project?

I often start by drawing and brainstorming around the subject. The drawing allows me to unlock a lot of ideas. I never keep the first thing that I come up with. My personal guideline is to tell a simple story with a touch of humor and creativity.

What was the most challenging thing about your project?

I really had a lot of different visions of the scene after coming to the main idea, so I had to make a lot of technical and graphical decisions in a small amount of time. The sound design was also challenging, because it was very important that it worked well with my ideas. There was a lot of experimentation matching up the sounds with the unique materials that were used. (plastic ball, sand spits against the ball, children’s voices, etc.). I love this part, because it really makes the animation feel alive.

Tell us a little about how you achieved the deflating beach ball effect and the dusty sand effects.

This is the first time I concretely used the “soft body” tag in C4D. I spent a day learning about dynamic rigid body and soft body tags, and used them to find a good bounce. I positioned a cube to act as a guide, so that the ball bounced in the right direction. The effects of sand are made with Trapcode’s Particular 2 and I used the dust effect from Video Copilot’s Action Essentials 2 library.

What renderer was used? Was there anything you needed to do to keep render times down?

I only use the basic modules rendered in C4D, 8bits/channel TIFF format, ambient occlusion and lensing. The compositing work was carried out in After Effects CC.

Did you use any Greyscalegorilla tools in your project?

For this project (and, the majority of my C4D projects) I used Texture Kit Pro and Light Kit Pro. I believe very sincerely that they become essential for designer who wishes to speed up their workflow and leave more space for creativity.

What do you enjoy most about participating in the five second projects?

What I like most about the concept of 5SP is the huge community that comes together with the desire to discover, meet, share, and learn. This is the great competitive spirit that moves us all forward at different levels. With every new project, it’s amazing to see the number of original ideas and the creativity in this community.

Don’t forget to participate in our current Five Second Project, Homework going on now.