Funny Little Furballs The image titled “Bumblebees” began some time ago as a playful thought. It shows three chubby bumblebees hovering between a mirror and some bathroom tiles; one of the bees had just been freshly shaven and the other two are caught in a fit of laughter. This image was an entry for the “Strange Behaviour” contest held back in 2007. “I have always loved bumblebees, because they are funny little furballs, tumbling around in the air as if they had been created for a funny cartoon. And their flight patterns are so unstable that it seems as though Nature shows her humour through them,” says Till. “I don’t know if it’s true, but someone once told me that scientists had calculated that the average bumblebee wouldn’t be able to fly under the known physical laws. Anyway, I got this idea of a shaved bumblebee a while ago and this contest just gave me the motivation to finish it. The topic “strange behaviour” exactly matched and one of the most important rules of this contest was sharing your process of creating the image, which also fit perfectly since I always do detailed making-of’s with all my work.”
And that’s what Till consistently does with his CG work; a break-down showing his methodical workflow and “Bumblebees” was no exception. “First I modelled the bumblebee using a 3rd party application,” explains Till. “Then I further modified and created from it three different bumblebees which I brought into 3ds Max. The bathroom scene around the bumblebees was not complex, it consists of only a few tiles and a flat back plate which is reflected in the mirror. For the bathroom there was almost nothing to model, it was more a question of material, lighting and reflections which I tweaked very carefully. The bumblebees’ materials, teeth and eyes were also added in 3ds Max. After rendering, I spent a lot of time in Photoshop adding details and carefully tweaking colour and lighting.”
