/ In the virtual room with Valentin Heinrich

Valentin Heinrich is a 3D artist. He began his art with flipbooks on notepads and his first stop-motion films in a village of 500 people in Baden-Württemberg. He then discovered his love of motionDesign and now lives and works as a freelancer in the 3D sector in Berlin. His clients come from a wide range of industries: from a publishing house for a manufacturer of colorful building blocks to a Canadian cannabis producer and WYE. For our home story segment, he also placed WYE pieces in the room - but unlike others, this is not a living space, but rather a weightless room.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, we were allowed to ask him a few questions about his work as a 3D artist and Designer:

1. When and how did you get into 3D modeling? How can a non-specialist imagine 3D modeling and creating 3D art? What do your tools look like? Do you have a virtual brush and color palette?
   I use the program Cinema4D to create my works. In principle, it works in a similar way to CAD software. You can create objects in a kind of 3D space in a preview, texture them, light them and display them as a preview. The actual lighting calculations are then performed or rendered by a plugin . I don't have a fixed color palette, but I move with my colors in a relatively natural spectrum, which is characterized by a warm-cold contrast.
   
   
2. How would you describe your style in 3 words?
   Clear, sometimes funny.
   
   
3. How do your ideas for motions and 3D art come about?
   Ideas for personal animations and renderings come into my head relatively suddenly. I've gotten into the habit of always having something to draw or write with me so that I don't forget them again straight away. At a later stage, I then sit down and work out the idea until it corresponds to what I had in my head.
   
4. How do you approach the design of virtual environments? What is important in the design of the space?
   I take a relatively systematic approach to designing 3D content. Starting from a kind of spatial sketch, I go into more and more detail and adapt one aspect after the other to my ideas. Probably the most important point is the lighting. Light is the decisive factor for the overall mood of a room.
   
   
5. You have developed a Dreamscape for us:what inspires you when designing the environments? Where do you get your inspiration from?
   If you walk through the world with your eyes open, you can really find inspiration everywhere in everyday life. Sometimes I find myself "thinking in 3D" about objects and surfaces, i.e. how they could be recreated. Of course, I also find lots of references on the internet. But the inner inspiration is completely different: I try to create digital places and objects that convey a sense of harmony.
   
   
6. What was it like for WYE to create a fantasy world?
   I really enjoyed creating the visuals for WYE. It's just nice to work with a product that is so clearly designed and appeals to me directly with its Design . The basic idea behind the design was to create an abstract world that appeals to the viewer on an emotional level and conveys a feeling of lightness. The basic shape of the Chamferfurniture evokes a feeling of weightlessness in me, so the idea of floating furniture was established relatively quickly. When setting the lighting, I made sure to emphasize the shape of the furniture and let it speak for itself.
   
   
7. What is the challenge in staging Möbeln und Interior Produkten?
   The special challenge in presenting furniture and other furnishings lies in deliberately emphasizing designed surfaces and shapes. It is therefore a matter of understanding the Design as far as possible and using this as a kind of guideline for the design of the renderings .

8. What is your persönal favorite project?
   In hindsight, the most important project so far has been the "Red Series". A work consisting of 3 animation loops that were created between the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018. When creating these loops, I was absolutely in the flow, forgot everything around me and was able to feel and create the animations from an inner drive . The feedback on these loops made me realize how strong the power can be that can emanate from virtually created but photorealistic images. In March 2021, I was finally able to sell the series to a collector of digital art via the digital art platform KnownOrigin .
   
   
9. Can your art be admired somewhere?
   You can see my projects on my website, Instagram and Behance .

Thank you dear Valentin for these unique insights into your work and your very special art, which enables us to look at our pieces - in the truest sense of the word - from a completely new angle!