Hasta La Motion!

See how Blind used Cinema 4D, After Effects, Octane, and Redshift to create several 3D scenes of popular games to announce Xbox Game Pass at E3 2018.

All images courtesy of Microsoft / Blind.

In 2018, for the fourth year in a row, Microsoft and the Ayzenberg Group tapped Los Angeles-based design and brand strategy studio Blind to create content for their high-profile E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) show. While last year’s project was devoted to the launch of the Xbox One X, this year’s goal was to highlight Microsoft’s monthly subscription service, Xbox Game Pass.

Blind’s challenge was two-fold: create something fun and engaging that amps up excitement about Xbox’s subscription service while also announcing current and upcoming games in some kind of creative way.

Collaborating closely with the Ayzenberg Group, Blind’s team, led by Creative Director Matt Encina, used Cinema 4D, After Effects, Octane, and Redshift to create a narrative that builds on Xbox Game Pass’s current drive-thru-themed marketing campaign.

The result brings the drive-thru to life, taking viewers on an animated, 3D adventure past glowing neon signs and game art featuring some of Xbox Game Pass’s current offerings, as well as action-packed dioramas showing off games coming soon to the catalog.

The adventure begins when viewers enter a tunnel into Xbox Game Pass’s animated, 3D drive-thru.

I asked Encina and John Robson, who served as associate creative director on the project, to explain how they dreamed up and executed the captivating project, which took intense coordination between many different teams.

Meleah Maynard: Matt, can you talk your process for dreaming up the kinds of things you do at Blind?

Matt Encina: Sure, my process is definitely something I’ve developed over time. I think that anytime you’re designing you are problem solving. And it’s not an art: It’s a science. I mean, there’s artistry in it, of course, but design is an objective process and you have to drill down to solve key problems.

Blind’s Executive Creative Director, Chris Do, has taught me that you need to make sure you understand things like: What is the goal? What are the challenges? Who is the audience? Once we understand those things, we know that whatever we make will be useful for the client. Then we move on to define the creative parameters.

Throughout the spot, the camera flies through dioramas of famed Xbox games and characters.

From the very first creative kickoff meeting with the client, I try to box in the creative. I find creativity in limitation, so I try to determine a very small box defining what the creative can and cannot be. I don’t like it when anything is possible because then everything is possible, and that is too daunting. Narrowing down allows me to focus 100 percent of my attention on one idea, rather that 1 percent on 100 ideas. (Watch Encina’s video on creating his presentation for Maxon’s 2018 SIGGRAPH booth.)

MM: Once you decided on a narrative for this, where did you go from there?

ME: To visualize the aesthetic, I first designed frames in Cinema 4D and Octane so I could get an idea of the overall look and also some of the key moments. After that I worked with a storyboard artist to create the sequence, and then I teamed up with John Robson to do the animatic. I’ve been working with John since 2006, and the good thing about him he has more of a film background and I have more of a design background and we really push each other throughout the process.

Neon and illuminated signs highlight the breadth of the Xbox Game Pass catalog.

If I can dream up a story, John can come up with ways to do it using C4D and third-party plugins. He’s always the guy who pushes me to try something new. I can be pretty simple in terms of the tools I use, but John is always experimenting on the fringe, and pushes us to adopt new tools and techniques. From there, I just scale up and build the team and hardware according to the specific needs of the project.

After researching how neon looks, Robson and Encina used Cinema 4D to design and create all of the neon signs to appear as realistic as possible.

MM: John, talk about your role in this project and what you tried that was new.

John Robson: There’s definitely been an evolution of how Matt and I work together. We push each other, and with this project, the client knows our potential and wanted to push the bar further too. Matt did some really beautiful style frames and we worked together to come up with ways to expand the drive-thru theme into more of a roller coaster ride. That’s how we came up with the idea for the dioramas. Those were fun, beautiful moments that felt like they were trapped in time. I really like the sense of realism and scale, which makes them feel less CG and more tactile.

Assets from each developer helped bring each diorama to life.

The new technology we tried for this project was Redshift. We worked in 4K and with Redshift, we were able to optimize our scenes and get through everything really fast. We were able to add so much more detail and volumetric lighting. But another big thing was that we didn’t have pre-rendered elements from the client.

We were able to bring in all of the assets from the different game companies and texture and light them to the level we needed on a really tight deadline. Back in the day, it took so many more steps and technical knowledge to create something that was in your head. Some of these shots only took a week from start to finish and they turned out beautifully.

MM: The dioramas are really striking. Explain a bit more about them.

ME: The neon signs are fun and based on actual game content, but we needed something more exciting to announce the new games, like Sea of Thieves and State of Decay.

We tried a lot of things, but they didn’t stick. Then we thought, ‘Hey, maybe there’s a way to incorporate game models into the drive-thru concept?’ So we put together two or three mockups and style frames and the client loved them so much, they expanded the project to include announce a few more games that are coming soon, like Forza Horizon 4.

Using Mixamo, Blind was able to pose game assets, including these for State of Decay, without having to rig the characters themselves.

JR: For the dioramas, we needed to stick pretty closely to what is possible in the game, so we would go back and forth with the game developers to make sure the situations were plausible. They were fun to work on, but we didn’t have a lot of time so we had to think about how to do things pretty quickly. State of Decay needed a hoard of zombies, so we used Adobe’s Mixamo to upload a model. It’s great because it creates the rig for you, which allowed us get a lot of poses really quickly without relying on a character animator for anything other than the kraken with all the tentacles that you see in Sea of Thieves.

After receiving a lot of different assets from the game, Sea of Thieves, Robson used Substance Painter to create all of the textures for the ships, treasure and other elements in the diorama.

MM: Describe how you brought your team together and how you worked with others.

ME: Our process is often the same for a lot of what we do. We try and keep the team as small as possible during development. Once the idea and technique are clear, we build the team based on what we need.

For this project, it was me and a few designers at the beginning, and then I brought on John to flesh things out. Then, in the last half of the project, we brought on six Cinema 4D artists and a Maya artist to get us to the finish line. We like to work that way because it allows us to spend our money very wisely.

With projects that are as big as this, it’s important to make sure everyone is in sync. Over the years, we’ve developed a great relationship with Ayzenberg and our partners at Microsoft, which allows us to work fluidly. When a change comes from the top, we’re able to move quickly, because egos don’t get in the way. Our team always stays objective, always tries to do right by our clients and we serve the best creative we can cook up.

Want more interviews like this? Check out these articles:

• The Rise of Redshift: An Interview With Trevor Kerr of MANVSMACHINE
• Animating 6 PayPal Commercials Using Cinema 4D and Redshift
• Creating the Memorable ‘Humankind’ Titles for TEDxSydney
• A New Look for NBC’s Longtime Hit Show ‘The Voice’

The post Designing a 3D Neon Spot for Xbox Game Pass appeared first on Greyscalegorilla.

HBO is all set to air a new animated retelling of the classic Hans Christian Andersen fable, The Emperor’s Newest Clothes on 15 November.

Written and produced by Sheila Nevins and directed by Simón Wilches-Castro, The Emperor’s Newest Clothes is a colorful and musical makeover of the tale. The whimsical 2D short was animated at Starburns Industries and features the voices of Alan Alda and Jeff Daniels alongside Alison Pill with original songs by Tony Award-winning composer William Finn.

Running 30 minutes, The Emperor’s Newest Clothes is set in an old kingdom where a great Emperor decides everything. Whether he tells villagers it’s sunny when it’s raining, or it’s raining when it’s sunny, the Emperor is the only arbiter who matters. Fearful of losing their jobs, the Emperor’s closest confidantes, Syco- the Jester and Phantic- the Advisor continually praise his decisions, however foolish.

When the Emperor declares a holiday celebrating himself, he orders Syco to round up the world’s greatest tailors to choose who might make him the “most beautiful, most exquisite” outfit ever and hires who promise to make the most elegant outfit that’s ever been made.

The tailors being con men presents an empty metal mannequin stand as real clothes which are so beautifully crafted that it’s imperceptible to naked eyes. Afraid to inform the Emperor about it, Syco and Phantic tell the increasingly impatient Emperor that the outfit is glorious and will be perfect.

Finally, the tailors are ‘finished’ and inspite of being skeptical in his heart, the Emperor ends up believing that he’s wearing the finest frock the world has ever seen. On the day of the parade, the Emperor marches before his subjects wearing only his underwear! The townsfolk hesitantly go along with the pretense, fearing the wrath of the Emperor but Thomasina, a perky young girl in the crowd who is too smart to join her elders in praising something that is not there, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all! It took a child to reveal the truth that no one else was willing to say out loud!

The post ‘The Emperor’s Newest Clothes’ coming on 15 November on HBO appeared first on AnimationXpress.

See how Blind used Cinema 4D, After Effects, Octane, and Redshift to create several 3D scenes of popular games to announce Xbox Game Pass at E3 2018.

All images courtesy of Microsoft / Blind.

In 2018, for the fourth year in a row, Microsoft and the Ayzenberg Group tapped Los Angeles-based design and brand strategy studio Blind to create content for their high-profile E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) show. While last year’s project was devoted to the launch of the Xbox One X, this year’s goal was to highlight Microsoft’s monthly subscription service, Xbox Game Pass.

Blind’s challenge was two-fold: create something fun and engaging that amps up excitement about Xbox’s subscription service while also announcing current and upcoming games in some kind of creative way.

Collaborating closely with the Ayzenberg Group, Blind’s team, led by Creative Director Matt Encina, used Cinema 4D, After Effects, Octane, and Redshift to create a narrative that builds on Xbox Game Pass’s current drive-thru-themed marketing campaign.

The result brings the drive-thru to life, taking viewers on an animated, 3D adventure past glowing neon signs and game art featuring some of Xbox Game Pass’s current offerings, as well as action-packed dioramas showing off games coming soon to the catalog.

The adventure begins when viewers enter a tunnel into Xbox Game Pass’s animated, 3D drive-thru.

I asked Encina and John Robson, who served as associate creative director on the project, to explain how they dreamed up and executed the captivating project, which took intense coordination between many different teams.

Meleah Maynard: Matt, can you talk your process for dreaming up the kinds of things you do at Blind?

Matt Encina: Sure, my process is definitely something I’ve developed over time. I think that anytime you’re designing you are problem solving. And it’s not an art: It’s a science. I mean, there’s artistry in it, of course, but design is an objective process and you have to drill down to solve key problems.

Blind’s Executive Creative Director, Chris Do, has taught me that you need to make sure you understand things like: What is the goal? What are the challenges? Who is the audience? Once we understand those things, we know that whatever we make will be useful for the client. Then we move on to define the creative parameters.

Throughout the spot, the camera flies through dioramas of famed Xbox games and characters.

From the very first creative kickoff meeting with the client, I try to box in the creative. I find creativity in limitation, so I try to determine a very small box defining what the creative can and cannot be. I don’t like it when anything is possible because then everything is possible, and that is too daunting. Narrowing down allows me to focus 100 percent of my attention on one idea, rather that 1 percent on 100 ideas. (Watch Encina’s video on creating his presentation for Maxon’s 2018 SIGGRAPH booth.)

MM: Once you decided on a narrative for this, where did you go from there?

ME: To visualize the aesthetic, I first designed frames in Cinema 4D and Octane so I could get an idea of the overall look and also some of the key moments. After that I worked with a storyboard artist to create the sequence, and then I teamed up with John Robson to do the animatic. I’ve been working with John since 2006, and the good thing about him he has more of a film background and I have more of a design background and we really push each other throughout the process.

Neon and illuminated signs highlight the breadth of the Xbox Game Pass catalog.

If I can dream up a story, John can come up with ways to do it using C4D and third-party plugins. He’s always the guy who pushes me to try something new. I can be pretty simple in terms of the tools I use, but John is always experimenting on the fringe, and pushes us to adopt new tools and techniques. From there, I just scale up and build the team and hardware according to the specific needs of the project.

After researching how neon looks, Robson and Encina used Cinema 4D to design and create all of the neon signs to appear as realistic as possible.

MM: John, talk about your role in this project and what you tried that was new.

John Robson: There’s definitely been an evolution of how Matt and I work together. We push each other, and with this project, the client knows our potential and wanted to push the bar further too. Matt did some really beautiful style frames and we worked together to come up with ways to expand the drive-thru theme into more of a roller coaster ride. That’s how we came up with the idea for the dioramas. Those were fun, beautiful moments that felt like they were trapped in time. I really like the sense of realism and scale, which makes them feel less CG and more tactile.

Assets from each developer helped bring each diorama to life.

The new technology we tried for this project was Redshift. We worked in 4K and with Redshift, we were able to optimize our scenes and get through everything really fast. We were able to add so much more detail and volumetric lighting. But another big thing was that we didn’t have pre-rendered elements from the client.

We were able to bring in all of the assets from the different game companies and texture and light them to the level we needed on a really tight deadline. Back in the day, it took so many more steps and technical knowledge to create something that was in your head. Some of these shots only took a week from start to finish and they turned out beautifully.

MM: The dioramas are really striking. Explain a bit more about them.

ME: The neon signs are fun and based on actual game content, but we needed something more exciting to announce the new games, like Sea of Thieves and State of Decay.

We tried a lot of things, but they didn’t stick. Then we thought, ‘Hey, maybe there’s a way to incorporate game models into the drive-thru concept?’ So we put together two or three mockups and style frames and the client loved them so much, they expanded the project to include announce a few more games that are coming soon, like Forza Horizon 4.

Using Mixamo, Blind was able to pose game assets, including these for State of Decay, without having to rig the characters themselves.

JR: For the dioramas, we needed to stick pretty closely to what is possible in the game, so we would go back and forth with the game developers to make sure the situations were plausible. They were fun to work on, but we didn’t have a lot of time so we had to think about how to do things pretty quickly. State of Decay needed a hoard of zombies, so we used Adobe’s Mixamo to upload a model. It’s great because it creates the rig for you, which allowed us get a lot of poses really quickly without relying on a character animator for anything other than the kraken with all the tentacles that you see in Sea of Thieves.

After receiving a lot of different assets from the game, Sea of Thieves, Robson used Substance Painter to create all of the textures for the ships, treasure and other elements in the diorama.

MM: Describe how you brought your team together and how you worked with others.

ME: Our process is often the same for a lot of what we do. We try and keep the team as small as possible during development. Once the idea and technique are clear, we build the team based on what we need.

For this project, it was me and a few designers at the beginning, and then I brought on John to flesh things out. Then, in the last half of the project, we brought on six Cinema 4D artists and a Maya artist to get us to the finish line. We like to work that way because it allows us to spend our money very wisely.

With projects that are as big as this, it’s important to make sure everyone is in sync. Over the years, we’ve developed a great relationship with Ayzenberg and our partners at Microsoft, which allows us to work fluidly. When a change comes from the top, we’re able to move quickly, because egos don’t get in the way. Our team always stays objective, always tries to do right by our clients and we serve the best creative we can cook up.

Want more interviews like this? Check out these articles:

• The Rise of Redshift: An Interview With Trevor Kerr of MANVSMACHINE
• Animating 6 PayPal Commercials Using Cinema 4D and Redshift
• Creating the Memorable ‘Humankind’ Titles for TEDxSydney
• A New Look for NBC’s Longtime Hit Show ‘The Voice’

The post Designing a 3D Neon Spot for Xbox Game Pass appeared first on Greyscalegorilla.

The series is reportedly cutting out Apu from The Simpsons. Amidst the mounting controversy around the much-famed animated series which had come under fire over its portrayal of convenience store kwik-owner Apu, who, first appeared on the the show in 1990, is reportedly going to be terminated from the show.

The controversy came to the fore when Hari Kondabolu’s documentary: The Problem with Apu emerged last year. The news comes from an IndieWire interview with producer Adi Shankar, who led a campaign earlier this year attempting to address the Apu problem by getting the script that he hoped for Fox to produce.

The said character has been the subject of complaints about stereotyping South Asians, intensifying in the last two years. Shankar claimed in the interview that he received news on Apu from two staff members and someone who works with creator Matt Groening. He had run a script competition for aspiring writers to come up with a script in the spirit of updating the character from a bad stereotype to a more nuanced and realistic version that positively portrays Indians in America.

However, The Simpsons showrunner AL Jean has weighed in on the claims about Apu being written out of show tweeting, “Adi Shankar is not a producer on The Simpsons. I wish him the very best but he does not speak for our show.”

Shankar then replied to Jean: “Let’s work towards common ground. The world is polarised and getting more so, and the onus is on us to bring people together. Engage in a constructive way and this matter will go to bed. I see you, now I’m asking you to see me.”

An April Simpsons episode made a glaring address to the controversy about the stereotypes embodied by Apu Nahasapeemapetilon (Indian-American owner of Springfield’s Kwik-E-Mart convenience store).

The post Apu to be dropped from ‘The Simpsons’? appeared first on AnimationXpress.

Netflix has announced to have renewed its successful adult animated series BoJack Horseman for season six as it is a rapidly growing slate of adult animated comedies at Netflix.

Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and designed by graphic artist Lisa Hanawalt, the Emmy Award-nominated and critically acclaimed BoJack Horseman debuted its fifth season on 14 September and has got an overwhelming response.

The series follows the titular character- a legendary but fatally flawed former 90s sitcom star, (voiced by Will Arnett) from the family-favourite sitcom Horsin’ Around, who has been trying to grapple self-loathing and failed relationships. Now, in the presence of his human sidekick Todd (Aaron Paul) and his feline agent and ex-paramour Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris), BoJack is all set to make his comeback. The series also stars Alison Brie and Paul F. Tompkins.

Season five has featured the same stellar level of writing that earned the series a WGA Award in 2017 for the episode Stop the Presses and again earlier this year for Time’s Arrow. Standout episode Free Churros, in which BoJack eulogises his mother at the wrong funeral, is sure to earn the series another nomination at the very least.

Produced by The Tornante Company and animated by ShadowMachine, BoJack Horseman is executive produced by Bob-Waksberg, Steven A. Cohen and Noel Bright, alongside Will Arnett and Aaron Paul.

The post Netflix’s ‘BoJack Horseman’ set for Season 6 appeared first on AnimationXpress.