Jun 06

Joseph Pierce: A Family Portrait

Posted in: family, General, hand drawn, joseph pierce, nfts, portrait, rotoscoping, short film


After a lengthy festival run, Joseph Pierce‘s A Family Portrait makes its online debut, presented by the hardworking fellows over at Short of the Week. It’s an awkward, uncomfortable moment with a family collapsing at the seams under the photographer’s (and our) eyes. The surreal play on rotoscoping was earlier explored in Pierce’s National Film & Television School graduation film, Stand Up.

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Jun 22

MAKE: PSISF Opener “Palm Springs”

Posted in: 2D animation, cel animation, chinatown, crime, drama, film festival, film noir, gangster, General, hand drawn, Intro, MAKE, Make Visual, Palm Springs International ShortFest, PSISF, thriller, who framed roger rabbit

Several days ago, we received the latest from MAKE: a knock down, drag out homage to film noir style crime dramas of old Hollywood, called Palm Springs. The piece was created for the Palm Springs International ShortFest, which runs from June 22nd – June 28th. Rather than opining on the merits of the work, we asked MAKE’s Director and Lead Animator for the opener, Andrew Chesworth, to summarize how the team of artists executed the piece, in detail:

“Palm Springs was created using primarily traditional animation drawn directly into Photoshop with Wacom Cintiq tablets.  The idea was to achieve the aesthetic of classical animation but to do it in a completely paperless fashion.   The creative workflow was near identical to that of traditional analog animation – starting with rough layouts buried in construction lines, and gradually working toward more finished scenes through a layering process of drawing.   In several scenes, assistants in-betweened and touched up the drawings of key animators, and finished animation was passed on to the colorists who painted each frame of animation with the dry-brush styling.

3D animation was employed for a handful of inorganic subjects, such as the vehicles in the car chase, the ceiling fan in the office, and the movie projector.  The modeling, animation, and rendering was all done in Maya.  Mental Ray’s contour shader was employed to achieve the outlines on the objects, and the models were built very specifically to accommodate the line work to match the drawn designs.  Hard shadow render passes, animated texture overlays, and a great deal of rotoscoped hand-drawn effects were composited onto the 3D elements to mesh them within the hand-drawn world as much as possible.

Compositing was all done in After Effects, where additional treatments were placed over the drawn elements to achieve a more analog aesthetic.  Subtle texture overlays, diffusion filters, and in many cases film grain and noise were added to conform the elements.”

For more, check out the Q&A and behind-the-scenes artwork that went into creating the opener here.

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Mar 04

Smith and Foulkes: Comcast “Sing-a-Long”

Posted in: 3d, cable, character animation, General, hand drawn, web

comcast-sing

For a series of four spots, Nexus Productions‘ Oscar-nominated directing duo Smith & Foulkes built a campy world brimming with detail and color for Comcast and agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners:

(I recommend starting with “Hi Def” and “On Demand.”)

Re-playability is key. These are going to be blasted into homes over and over for months to come, so I appreciate that Smith & Foulkes and their team of unsung heroes spent so much time and energy adding in little bits for me to discover on each viewing. (That also gave interactive studio Unit 9 endless fodder for developing the companion website.)

The Kimya Dawson-esque soundtrack is either wonderful or wretched, depending on personal tastes, but it was a big factor in Smith & Foulkes’ creative process:

It was really the music that first attracted us to the Comcast project. With this as our starting point we thought it would be fun to create a world where the whole community lives to the rhythm of the music. We decided there would no cuts and the environment would be totally isometric.

That isometric approach reminds me of eBoy’s legendary illustrations, which were undoubtedly an influence on the team. But that’s not to take anything away from the outstanding work that illustrator/character-designer Chris Martin did on these spots. He brought his own unique style to bear on this project, softening the precision of the isometric perspective with his hand-drawn charm.

Adam Smith and Alan Foulkes both made cameos, by the way. See if you can spot them.

Credits

Title: ʻSing-a-Longʼ
Client: Comcast
Duration: 1 x 60″, 5 x 30″

AGENCY
Creative Director: Jamie Barrett
Group Creative Director: Chris Ford
ACD/Art Director: Stefan Copiz
ACD/Copywriter: Paul Charney
Copywriter: Andrew Bancroft
Producer: Ashley Sferro

PRODUCTION
Director: Smith & Foulkes
Executive Producer: Chris O’Reilly & Julia Parfitt
Producer: Isobel Conroy
Art Director / VFX Supervisor: Fletcher Moules
Illustration & Character Design: Chris Martin
3D Animation & Compositing: Nexus

LIVE ACTION PRODUCTION
c/o Bright Pictures
Exec Producer: Rudy Callegari
1st Assistant Director: Todd Lent
Director Of Photography: Ueli Steiger

INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION
Producer: Pip Malone
Interactive Director: Tim Dillon
Production: Nexus

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Smith and Foulkes: Comcast “Sing-a-Long”

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