I first discovered Proximity (an EDM YouTube channel) in 2013.
A YouTuber I watched at the time had used the song Overtime by Cash Cash in one of their videos and following the link in the description lead me to the Proximity channel.
I subscribed and closely followed the songs they uploaded - adding any of my favourites to a playlist of mine.
The backdrops used in their uploads are works of art. By digging through video descriptions, I discovered the images used were from email submissions from people on the internet.
Since then, I knew that I wanted to have an image of mine as the background to one of their uploads.
My Quest to be Featured on Proximity
A common theme in many of the backgrounds was to use the yellow, pink and cyan colour scheme of the channel. To best improve my chances of being featured, I knew this had to be a requirement of mine.
Attempt No. 1
My first attempt (20/11/2016) was a very simple rendering of some triangles I had modelled in SolidWorks (🤦♂️) and brought into KeyShot to texture and render.
At the time, I was very proud of the render and thought it stood a good chance of being featured on the channel. I sent it and just hoped for a response.
Two days later, I received a response:
Beautiful thank you Ben.
I did it! They loved the rendering too and would definitely use it in a future music video.
Or so I hoped...
I eagerly awaited each upload since that response, but slowly began to realise that it was never really going to be used.
Attempt No. 2
My second attempt (14/01/2017) was a similar idea to my first rendering - this time with hexagons.
In the time that had passed since my first attempt, my rendering skills had improved and was even more confident this time that my image would be used.
I sent it.
No response.
I had hoped that they forgot to reply but still were interested in using the image. Deep down, I knew that the rendering just wasn't good enough to be used for the channel.
I was gutted that my first two attempts had not been used on the channel after all that work. I almost gave up, but decided to give it one last go.
Attempt No. 3
Third time lucky.
For my third attempt (10/06/2017), I went in with a completely different approach.
I had recently discovered the power of Cinema4D and knew it would be perfect for creating a rendering to be used by the channel.
I followed some excellent tutorials by Greyscalegorilla and after lots of practice - I managed to create 'Heart Explosion' as shown above.
A (very) long two weeks after sending it to the channel, I got a response:
This is beautiful will definitely use this. Thank you :)
All I could do was hope that they stayed true to their word.
One week later, I saw that it had been used in one of their uploads.
I was ecstatic.
The video has since amassed over 3 million views and to this day, I still get people complimenting the image.