Cicle

This is a quiet, relaxing and non-climactic short movie born out of simple experiments.
Working with CG car commercials requires a lot of different rendering passes that are later composited together. One of my favorite pass is the one including only the headlights and rearlights of the car turned on and their effect on the environment. Such pass is used to easily adjust the amount of light coming from the car compared to the light coming from the surroundings, but I actually find it beautiful and mysterious on its own. It became the main visual inspiration for this short movie.
more at : juvano.com/Cicle
Another inspiration came from the amazing Madcar plugin for 3dsmax. As we were experimenting with it and see how far we could push the physics, we ended up with this Rama style setup where the cars would evolve in a world where gravity is cylindrical.
Combined with the mysterious visual look we have from the lighting pass, the movie's story simply became a gradual reveal of this unusual physical behavior.
Credits:
CG/Direction: Julien Vanhoenacker
Animation: Alejandro Garcia
CG: Joaquim Montserrat
Music: Cliff Martinez