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Maxon Cinema 4D Powers M dot Strange's Third Animated Fantasy Feature Film, "I am Nightmare" image

Maxon Cinema 4D Powers M dot Strange's Third Animated Fantasy Feature Film, "I am Nightmare" Award-winning Indie Filmmaker Single-handedly Deploys End-to-End Maxon 3D Workflow to Create Entire CG Film

Award-winning indie filmmaker M dot Strange created his new animated feature film, I am Nightmare single-handedly with Maxon Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D. The film follows his two previous independent animated films, Heart Strings Marionette (2012) and We Are the Strange (2007), which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was honored with the Golden Prize for most groundbreaking film at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal the same year.

Using Cinema 4D, Strange spent a little over one year making I am Nightmare, a 127-minute film that features 1420 shots to evoke dream-like characters and a mysteriously haunting atmosphere. Strange underscored the critical role a 3D software package plays in streamlining the creative process that involves various elements from acting/voices, animation, editing and camera work.

"Cinema 4D is a CG movie studio-in-a-box that gives the one-person animation studio the perfect combination of ease of use and a powerful feature-rich toolset that delivers unmatched performance for creating entire CG feature films alone," Strange says

Strange used MoGraph to build sets, the stylized doll-like characters were created using a combination of keyframe and procedural animation techniques. BodyPaint 3D was used to paint all the models and texture all the props and sets to create a rough, hand-painted look instead of simply adding a pre-made texture to the assets.

To animate and manage the assets of the more than 1400 shots in I am Nightmare, Strange used the Content Browser in Cinema 4D as a 'living storyboard' to organize all the elements in his 'digital backlot.' He also relied on Cinema 4D's Character Animation and Motion Clip system to create common animations for all the characters in the film.

For the stylized and foggy mood, Strange relied on the powerful lighting system in Cinema 4D including a mix of the Volumetric and Visible Lights functions. The Vibrate Tags and Displacement Deformers in the software also enabled him to add weird random movements that could be dragged and dropped into scenes using the XPresso visual node-based expressions feature.

For additional information on the Cinema 4D workflow on I am Nightmare, please visit the CGS Feature.

Watch the Behind the Scenes video.

For more information on Mysterious Doll Studios and I am Nightmare visit http://iamnightmare.vhx.tv/. The independently produced film is being distributed by Strange and is available for purchase online here.