Dave Fothergill’s VFX demo marries chaos and slick software mastery

Visual effects artist Dave Fothergill’s hypnotising animation I’ve Fallen, And I Can’t Get Up! is a glorious combination of schadenfreude, and an investigation into the capabilities of some high-end visual software.

The video by the RealtimeUK senior VFX artist recruits a huge crowd of little virtual people to demonstrate the capabilities of Maya animation software, which he’s used with the crowd-simulation Miarmy plug-in. The poor little guys fling themselves into a revolving metal bar, haplessly falling over one another in a strange orbit of masochistic Where’s Wally?-like chaos and clumsy men in chinos.

For all the mayhem there’s a certain satisfaction at the denouement, when this mass of animated bodies neatly falls into a clean, revolving circle, magnetised to the central bar. Not to mention how pleasing it is to pore over these peculiar figures and realise that more than one looks strangely like someone you once worked in a call-centre with…