First blog post!

Welcome!

I’ve started a blog to share some of my creative processes with the world.

I have been figuring out how to create animation since I first learned Maya in 2013 while in graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill. It was during that course that I also discovered Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects, which are now what I would consider my primary creative tools.

I am far from an expert at using either software, but I’ve had a couple of people ask about various techniques I’ve used in my artwork over the past couple of years. So, in the spirit of giving back to the same community that taught me so much through blog posts, tutorials, and forums, I’m going to start digging into how I create my artwork and sharing a lot of project files, shaders, and 3D models that I create along the way.

I also hope to use this blog as a way to help folks who are just getting started with Cinema 4D and After Effects. I know how intimidating they both can be to learn. As an adjunct, I currently teach Media Design at UNC-CH and my graphic design students always ask whether they should start using 3D in their work. Of course, I always tell them, “YES!” So I hope my blog can also function as a useful knowledge base for them.

I hope anyone who reads this finds my posts informative and useful. Feel free to email me at grayson.mendenhall@gmail.com if you have any questions about my work.

In my next post, I’m going to go over the custom PC that I built in 2022 specifically for using Cinema 4D with Redshift GPU renderer. I’ll share each of the components (with links) and talk a little bit about the build process, which was so much more simple than I thought it was going to be.

Take care!