Happy Drum Beats

A slightly macabre but thoroughly enjoyable music video created by Job, Joris and Marieke using Cinema 4D.

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A bunch of cute, musically inclined creatures with zebra stripes running a parcours from rooftop to rooftop accompanied by the new song from the Dutch band Happy Camper, The Daily Drumbeat. Soon the race evolves into a macabre version of musical chairs - with drum sets instead of chairs. Whoever's not sitting behind the drums when the refrain starts is pushed off the building by an invisible hand - and the game continues with one less player

Joop, Joris and Marieke is a team of Dutch film makers with a love of cartoons and short films. Their projects are created using Cinema 4D, which offers them the flexibility and power they need to successfully realize their complex visions. Joop, Joris and Marieke also have established a reputation with their past work, including their well-known work Mute', which recently garnered a lot of attention worldwide. This short film also used highly stylized characters and a very dark humor, which also found its way into The Daily Drumbeat'.

The music is very upbeat but the lyrics have a dark touch: The drum beat will get you!' , explained Job. We wanted to express this somewhat foreboding message in our film. This is how we came up with the idea of the invisible hand that eliminates one character after the next from the game. The visuals had to have a crude, rough and grainy style and look like they were filmed using a handheld camera. This is why the film was made in black-and-white and a lot of motion blur and depth of field was used. These were all effects that we could easily create using Cinema 4D's standard renderer without generating exorbitant render times, even though the scene was made up of a comprehensive cityscape. We also used a few tricks, admits Job. We created Sky objects to which not only the sky was applied but parts of the city as well. This helped convey the impression of a big city without inflating render times.

The zebra suit-clad characters were modeled, textured, rigged and animated in Cinema 4D. Since the characters' physiology was very compact, the Jiggle deformation object was used to let their noses whip about nicely and make their movements more dynamic, which in turn produced a very organic look.

After their success with Mute', The Daily Drumbeat' also earned the title Staff Pick at Vimeo. Not bad for Job, Joris and Marieke, who actually come from the field of graphic design. Despite our professional backgrounds, we all had a strong desire to switch from design to animation. Cinema 4D is perfect for everyone wanting to get the best possible start in 3D animation. Not only does everything work great, it's also very intuitive to use, says Job.

Job, Joris & Mariekes website:

www.jobjorisenmarieke.nl

Happy Camper website:

www.happycampermusic.com

LINK:	http://www.maxon.net/en/news/singleview-default/article/happy-drum-bea...
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