The 2025 edition of Half Rez launched in Chicago on Friday with this rousing vision crafted by Oddbeast co-founder/ECD Kevin Gautraud who calls the film a “Sagan-inspired meditation on our small moment in the vastness of time.”

Kevin Gautraud: “I chose to ground the short in responses particular to fears about making a living in today’s creative fields where the rate of change feels insane at times, overwhelming artists with existential questions. Sometimes, ‘I don’t know’ is the most truthful answer anyone can give.
 

“I chose to ground the short in responses particular to fears about making a living in today’s creative fields where the rate of change feels insane at times.”

 
“I was inspired by Carl Sagan and his own personal philosophy. He was awestruck at the grandeur of nature, curious about the origin of life, and humble about the extent of human knowledge. It’s about making people feel small, strange and somehow okay with that.

“We used a range of tools to give his concept life, including QuadSpinner’s Gaea, one of the industry’s leading terrain design platforms for VFX, games and virtual production, Houdini for a handful of simulation-based effects, and Cinema 4D for final assembly and rendering using OctaneRender.

“A grant to OddBeast from the Render Network Foundation allowed the team to render scenes extremely quickly using their RNDR network platform (distributed render farm), which was critical to the project’s development.”
 
 

 
Client: Half Rez

Production: OddBeast
EP: Michael Brookbank
Senior 3D Animator: Kevin Gautraud
Animation Support: Alex Weber, Liam Conway
Modeling Support: Khanh Ha

Music/Sound Design: Bent Stamnes