We’re starting our 2016 interview series with Zacharias Reinhardt who has been playing around creating Sci-Fi movies since he was a teenager. Now, at 26, he is a Blender Certified Trainer and, together with his brother Vincent, is the owner of the AgenZasBrothers agency.
As you will learn, Zacharias now puts his efforts mostly into tutoring—doing workshops, Blender video tutorials, in-house training for companies and even remote teaching. He has made more than 180 Blender tutorials which are free on YouTube. But Zach is also into doing his own films, and his project Repto108 is now in the pipeline. Read on for some cool answers from Zach.
Marius Iatan: Let’s start with a bit of history: how does a self taught Blenderhead become a Blender Foundation Certified Trainer?
Zacharias Reinhardt: Well all in all, I guess it’s due to the fact that I’m very passionate and persistent with the whole Blender thing I was and I’m still doing. It will be better understood when we take a look at my history as a 3D Artist (sorry for the long text):
Back in 2004 (I was 15) I bought my first (crappy) digital camera and together with my brother Vincent (we have nearly the same hobbies) we started to create our first amateur short movies. That was the first time we came in touch with VFX & 3D. Back then we edited single frames of our movie and painted muzzle flashes and explosion on it, using GIMP (frame by frame). In 2005 my brother downloaded Blender the first time (I think it was 2.36). With a very slow internet connection we downloaded some PDF tutorials and started to learn. We had no YouTube etc. back then, so it was quite hard to get into the (unfavourable) UI of Blender. But after a short while I was able to add some spaceships etc. to my movies. That was the time I fell in love with 3D. After that, my brother came up with Cinema 4D, the UI was incredibly easy to understand compared to Blender, so we used C4D from that point on. I have to admit that I learned most of the basic 3D stuff using C4D not Blender during the years until 2009. I was working on different personal movie projects, basically I spent the most of my free time to learn 3D and to make personal projects. For example, together with my brother we have realized a 100 minutes long amateur sci-fi action comedy movie in about 3 years (using C4D, After Effects, Premiere etc.). Here you can watch the (very old) trailer:
Most of the old projects we didn’t put online because we used music we had no licenses for (we had no idea back then about all the music rights stuff). Here is another short movie I have created during that time:
So you can see I have spent a lot of time learning 3D. In 2009 I came back to Blender (2.49) because I was working in a local TV channel and there I needed a free 3D software for some intros and also for a short movie project—this one has subtitles:
Then, in 2010, my brother showed me the new Blender 2.5 UI and all the great new features. That was the point where I slowly decided to come back to Blender. Some months later Blender was my main 3D tool, never opened C4D again since then. You can see I owe my brother a lot. He also was the one who published the first Blender (2.49) tutorials on our website, but he didn’t continue after his fist tutorials. In 2010 I decided to publish my first Blender tutorials, because back then there where no good tutorials about Blender 2.5 in German. I got a lot of great feedback from the audience and that pushed me to go on with my tutorials and publish even more.
In 2011 my brother and I funded the company AgenZasBrothers after we have worked for about two years in an advertising agency. In our company and also before in this other agency we were working with Blender on customer projects. On the side I still published more Blender tutorials and in 2012 we released the first collection of my tutorials for everyone to buy and support my Blender work. In the following years I have created and published more of such video workshops (all in German). Than, in 2013, I thought it’s time to apply for the Blender Foundation Certified Trainer and it was approved! After that I also stared to hold Blender classes in Germany and provide personal Blender support. In 2015 I started to publish my tutorials also in English—that was something I wanted to do for a long time. Also our first English video workshop “Movie Scene Creation in Blender 3D” is about to be released very soon (the German version is already available). Read more about that here. Hope you have an idea now! 🙂
Marius: You have created many tutorials and you are teaching Blender classes as well. What are the skills for being a good Blender trainer?
Zacharias: I think basically you have to be born to teach, I think teaching is not everyone’s thing. The following things are very importaint for a teacher, in my opinion:
- The first thing you need, is to have fun while teaching and also you should be able to speak in front of an audience.
- You should have a solid knowledge about what you are teaching. The best way is that you already have proven your knowledge in practice, like working on serious projects.
- You have to be very (very) patient, because sometimes you have to explain things 3, 4 or more times.
- You should be able to plan and organize your workshops in a way that it is easy to follow, but on the other hand that your students will get the most out of.
- Also it’s important to slip into the students shoes, because you have a solid understanding of what you are teaching, but your students have not. So you need to explain things in an easy to understand way (try to use less technical terms).
Marius: Give us some numbers: how many hours in total have you recorded in your tutorials?
Zacharias: Including the current workshop I have recorded over 210 video tutorials with a total running time of about 80 hours.
Marius: You are about to release a new tutorial these days, about movie scene creation. Is this something your users have asked for?
Zacharias: Not really, I did some surveys about that in the past, but in the end I do things I personally like to do. Our big dream at AgenZasBrothers is to create our own cinema movies, so this workshops is just combining the things we love doing: Blender training, 3D animation and movie production. Personally I think if you do something you really love, you can create a very valuable product.
Marius: How are you and your older brother Vincent managing the agency—who does what and who else is helping you?
Zacharias: In the first years my brother was more like a boss and I was like an employee. So he did all the paperwork besides working on the customer projects and I was working more on the projects themselves. Nowadays we split up the paperwork (we still do most of it our own). My brother is managing all the movie production projects and I manage all the 3D animation and also Blender training projects. Certainly we’re working on some of the projects together. Also another part of my job is to do marketing and keep our social media alive. I really like to connect with the community. After we had two employees in the last years it’s now only the two of us, due to some hard times we had. These days we have a big network of artists we are working with on larger projects. Also, we like to work together with our sister Felicitas—she is doing concept ideas for customer projects and also does the writing, translations and the text editing. She is the one who writes the screenplay for our movie project Repto108.
Hattu Motschi concept by Zacharias Reinhardt for Repto108
Marius: How do you make time to work on Repto108 or other personal projects?
Zacharias: Well, sometimes you just have to take your time, even if there are some other important projects. The thing is, when you’re always working on customer projects, you’ll never find the time for the things you really love doing. So during the day I’m working on important customer projects, and at night (when my son and my girlfriend are already sleeping) I usually put some time in my personal projects. I hope that in the future, I can put more weight on my personal projects, including free Blender tutorials).
Marius: What other programs and applications do you use in your work besides Blender?
Zacharias: For customer projects we use the well known Adobe CC tools like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition etc. but also I love using Krita and Mischief for my personal projects. And certainly some special tools for special jobs from time to time.
Rocket Car by Zacharias Reinhardt painted in Krita
Marius: What was the most challenging moment in your agency so far?
Zacharias: The most challenging part was the financial part. Especially during the times we had two employees. We had less projects than expected especially during summer time and so we had to dismiss them. That was a very hard decision. Also last year my brother and I were still working in the office we rented for our big team. We had to move out and start doing home office, because the big office caused too much expenses. This was also a hard decision. But after all, they were the best decisions we could make. Now the company is running quite well, and it turned out that it also was the best decision for of our former employees as well. Sometimes you have to go two steps back to move on in a good direction.
Cute monster for Weekly CG Challenge
Marius: The German Blender community seems pretty tight, and never misses an edition of FMX or BConf to get together. Tell us more about the Blenderheads in Germany—meetups, businesses that are using Blender, magazines etc.
Zacharias: I have to admit that I mostly connect with Blenderheads from other countries. But I know a lot of German Blenderheads too, especially from the Blender Conference. I have also visited the German BlenderDay one time, but for that I had to travel on a longer route than to the Blender Conference. Due to the fact that the event is much smaller (40-50 visitors) and so far away, I haven’t been there since.
I think the most people I meet are in my German Blender classes. Most of them are hobbyists or freelancers, so it’s great to learn about the different areas these people are working with Blender. I just know a few businesses that are using Blender—mainly that are freelancers, independent game studios or 3D scan and print facilities.
Also I write articles for the German magazine Digital Production (that are the same guys managing the Animago Award and Conference). They told me, that their readers really like all the content about Blender.
Marius: I really enjoyed the short interviews taken at last year’s Blender Conference. You should make this a tradition for the next editions!
Zacharias: That’s great to hear, it was also fun for us doing it! If I manage to get to the Conference this year, I absolutely think about doing it again 🙂
Marius: What are your new year’s Blender resolutions?
Zacharias: My biggest goal for 2016 is to work on my artistic side, that means working more on my personal projects and doing art which I really love. That also means having more time for the movie project Repto108. In relation to that, I want to get independent from customer projects. I’m planning on putting more time on my Blender classes, Blender video workshops and also free tutorials. Also I’m thinking of doing a Patreon campaign for my free Blender tutorial part. So let’s see how that all works out.
Thanks for the interview!
Marius: Thank you for your great answers!
