I’d never heard of a render farm before embarking on this project. How would I have done? Until this escapade I’d never found myself needing to render complex scenes of wheat and waterfalls. During this project, however, I came to realise that a render farm was exactly what I needed – for if I were to render out some of these scenes on my own computer I’d miss the project deadline by about three years. 

A student at the time, I’d heard whispers that the animation department had a render farm. I marched on down and demanded to be acquainted with it, only to be shown a shelf full of computer bits and wires: “That’s it there. We haven’t got around to building it yet.”

Left with nowhere else to turn, I began commandeering computers in the library – setting them to render day and night. One by one they fell, until I had an army of twelve computers running simultaneously, rendering scenes in my own image. After about a week of this the library staff began to crack down and investigate who this computer kidnapper may be. And despite my best efforts to only tend to my machines under cover of darkness, I was eventually caught and asked “what do you think you’re doing?”. Unable to provide a good answer, my rendering operation was shut down. No matter though, for the mission was already accomplished; while they might have had their surface level victory, I had my completed renders.