Switches

Jeremy Seeman has taken the 3D art world by storm with his hypnotic looping animations. Working under the name Kinetic Graphics, his animations play with scale and movement using a distinctly surrealist style. 

In ‘Switches,’ Jeremy builds on a previous work, “Switching Pendulums.” This piece features two pendulums sliding back and forth across a light switch, changing colors and patterns each time the switch flipped. The animation quickly gained traction on social media, with many users commenting on its soothing nature. 

“I think my work takes a sub-genre of 3D art, the ‘Oddly Satisfying’ movement, and adds an unexpected twist to it,” says Jeremy. Each piece in Switches features one of eleven different machines that press buttons or flick switches. The machines are each placed in environments that explore different textures and movement qualities. 

The machines move at three different rates and have a total of 40 rarity traits across five categories. While some of the animations look similar, each one features a different combination of rarity traits to make it unique. “The rate change [in each piece] is either satisfying or annoying, depending on the scene the switch is in. That was an interesting and unexpected result,” says Jeremy. Eleven pieces are deliberately made to be rare, with one piece featuring a set of unique traits not found elsewhere in the collection. 

Jeremy started by creating the machines, which took about a month to complete. Jeremy created around 40 possible machines during that time before narrowing down the collection to 11. “I had a few rules for them,” he says. “They had to have different speeds. They had to be interesting. They had to range from simple to unnecessarily complex.” 

After settling on which machines to feature in the collection, Jeremy developed the scenes around them. “Building the scenes was the fun part, because I wanted to create something compelling either visually or metaphorically,” he says. “I found myself wondering what you could control with a switch if anything was possible.” 

The process of creating the scenes for each machine took approximately five months. “The initial inspiration for this was to create contrasting scenery,” says Jeremy. “Like life and death, big and small, etc. As I started building the machines, I realized they might have to be a bit more simple than that, like in and out, stop and go, or on and off.” 

Many of the pieces are very complex and feature immersive scenes that reflect the extremes of both nature and machinery. Jeremy cites inspiration for his work as coming from “math, rhythm, nature, and pop culture,” and all of these elements are present across the collection. 

While creating the collection, Jeremy worked in bursts of inspiration, writing all of the audio for the collection in just one day. “I find that I am most creative in the evening and when I procrastinate,” he says. “This behavior has led to too many late evenings where I should really sleep instead.” 

In his two years working as a 3D artist, Jeremy has already been incredibly prolific, and he plans to continue with future collections. He plans to build relationships with his collectors with whitelist spots for previous collectors and potential personalized airdrops. 

While the animations in this collection are certainly relaxing to watch, they go above and beyond the satisfying loops that have become so popular on social media. The interaction between the machines and their environments tell a story that you won’t want to look away from.