Simon Christoph Krenn’s 3D animation, Parasitic Endeavours, initially started out as the creative wanting to explore distorted perspectives on human evolution. “I think my main inspiration came from nature and its creative forces themselves. I used to study zoology at university and was especially fascinated by evolutionary biology and the development of animal morphologies,” says Austria-based Simon. “I realised the video’s strange and somehow creepy potential and decided to push the animation even more into this direction.”
The result is a compilation of body parts, mainly heads and torsos, that wobble along a white backdrop and bump together like rubber mannequins. The hyperreal detail is unnerving and to see recognisable human parts being manipulated making the viewer feel both uncomfortable and mesmerised.
“I used a software called Houdini to turn 3D photoscan geometry into soft body objects with physical properties,” explains Simon. “I also applied different forces, like gravity, to the simulations in an effort to create more natural movements and collisions. The physical properties were set in a way to resemble a very soft and rubber-like material with a lot of elasticity. In order to render the scenes, I used a GPU render engine that allowed me to work a lot faster than it would have been possible with conventional CPU renderers.”
Simon’s photorealistic CG experiment highlights his surreal imagination and the precise detail it takes to achieve these tests. Parasitic Endeavour has also laid the ground work for an upcoming interactive project Simon is working on, as well as also prototyping scenes and simulations for his next video.

Words by Rebecca Fulleylove, Monday 18 December 2017
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