First, inquests are everything and so we swam through the world wide web in search for microscopic images of protozoans and their various companions. It´s very important to get a feeling for the appearance, the shapes and so on of the objects we gonna create, even if realism won´t be that important.

Then, Philipp did some premature modelling of the parameciums bodies. "Well, it was quite simple", he said, "the whole idea was nothing more then working with simple distortions like FreeForm-Deformation. It was never meant to be an intense quest for reality, so anyway" Problems? "Yes, sure, there always are. For example, in the first approach I used a standard spheres, which caused troubles at the poles, for sure. So I switched to lofting splines along a profile. I should have been thinking at first."

Philipp was also spending much of his time with a microscope, when he was a child. So, out of his childhood experience, he had clear favorites for the other supernumeraries. "Those green algea Volvox are such beauties, their spheroid shape and the pure aesthetics of those tiny plants are astonishing. They HAD to be inside the picture." He also chose some vorticellas, and bigger green algea.

The Volvox algeas have been built by using a sphere for the outer layers, scaling it down as a duplicate and use that inner layer as a base for scattering smaller spheres over the surface. At each vertex on the outer sphere, a cone was placed, according to the normals. Is this how the look like in reality? "Oh I don´t know for sure now. Hey, I have never finished by biology study." Freedom for artist, we call it.

The other algea trunks have been simply modelled by using a cylinder and editing it, and placing a chamfered cylinder inside. Then duplication and bending did the job. The vortivellas are also done in a fast and simple way, a circle spline has been lofted along a twisted helix. A profile of the upper "head" has been created, and by using lathe, it has become a bell-like shape. Then both parts have been fused together.

The parameciums have been equipped with more pushed sphere with 3D noises, which would represent the cytoblast and other celluar structures. Those have been also duplicated and scaled up a little bit, so they are resting inside a more transparent capsule. Along the sides, the swimming cilia have been created by using a hair simulation. In Reality, they are arranged around to whole body and there would be around 10.000 of those. But who cares.

For rendering, a fog did the water trick and by adding noise to it, it becomes full of particulate material.

"Well, for just investing such a small amount of time, I´m quite statisfied. It has been at least a week on my desktop as a wallpaper. Thats good.", Philipp nodes when being asked, if he could live with the results.