Hasta La Motion!

If you’re in need a good chuckle, take five minutes to watch the lovingly crafted “JohnnyExpress,” the latest short from Korea-based Alfred Imageworks.

This mock commercial is just too much fun not to share. I only wish real clients had the guts (pun intended) to fund this kind of work.

Cinesite created this project as a showcase for their artists. With superb comedic timing, lushly rendered animation and brilliant creature work, I’d say it’s a slam dunk. The short was written and directed by Animator Alvise Avati and produced by Animation Director Eamonn Butler.

Cinesite on the look development:

The look of the lunar environment is based on NASA film footage and actual lunar photography. Eamonn says, “At the start, the film is quite serious in tone and then it develops, becoming more dramatic as it progresses before ending on a surprise. To support this, the environment needed to be photo-realistic. We also wanted to push the animation and effects as far as we could to make the film as dramatic as possible before the payoff.

Tip o’ the hat to Todd Akita.

Written and Directed
Alvise Avati

Producer
Eamonn Butler

VFX Supervisor
Richard Clarke

Art Direction
Jean-David Solon

Concept Art
Andrea de Martis

Modelling and Rigging
Grahame Curtis
Royston Willcocks
Richard Boyle

Animation
Alvise Avati
Eamonn Butler
Peter Clayton
Tom O’Flaherty
Adam Bailey

Texture Artists
Nicolette Newman
Gary Newman

FX Animation
Andreas Vrhovsek
Luke Wilde

Lighting and Compositing
Zave Jackson
Nikos Gatos
Jonathan Vuillemin
Dan Harrod
Joel Bodin

Editorial
William Marshall-Wilkinson
Christopher Learmonth

Posted on Motionographer

In December of last year Halo 4 came out and the world rejoiced. Along with it came a web series called Forward Unto Dawn which was a live action VFX set that brought the Halo universe to life. It opened with 5 fantastic title sequences created by Polynoid a German Design/VFX house.

From the Press Release:

Polynoid’s microfilms illustrate the intense relationship between Cortana, an artificial intelligence entity and indispensable aide to Master Chief, the long-time hero of the Halo series. Set aboard a spacecraft, the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn, as it drifts towards imminent doom, Cortana must battle to awaken Master Chief from cryo-stasis before it’s too late.

“For us, Cortana was the centerpiece around which we spun our story,” said Polynoid’s Jan Bitzer. “When we started working out the scenes and shots, we did it under the premise that Cortana is the only ‘alive’ being we could play with.”

With elegantly framed shots, drifting cameras and gloomy lighting, Polynoid emphasized the soul-crushing loneliness aboard the nearly empty spacecraft. To effectively communicate the passing of time, Polynoid switched from the relative calm of zero-gravity to intense time-lapsed action.

“[The time lapse sequence] was technically the most challenging. We spent a lot of time tweaking it; always trying to improve every shot simultaneously to guarantee a consistent quality for the overall piece,” Bitzer noted.

Polynoid and Blacklist collaborated with 343 Industries every step of the way, carefully guarding production from the massive press surrounding “Halo 4.” “Polynoid are gamers, and this was a dream opportunity,” said Blacklist Executive Producer Adina Sales. “This project was a perfect fit for our team.  343 was looking for a sophisticated interpretation and they encouraged us to push the artistic lense.  Polynoid had a clear vision from the outset and we were determined to deliver in spades.  We’re very proud of the results.”

Here you can see a detailed making of that goes through their entire process from conception:

Don’t forget to check out their site page for the sequence for some stills and styleframes!

We dropped them a line to do a little Q&A with Polynoid’s Jan Bitzer and Fabian Pross.  Here’s a snippet but click ‘Full Interview’ to view the entire thing!

Fabian Pross on the FX:

We used Softimage ICE for almost all our effects work. The rampancy is actually not simulated, but a combination of procedural modeling and some keyframes.

Jan Bitzer on the Asset Development

343 Industries provided us with most of the CG assets which we had to bring together on an equal production level. Some elements where very high poly and had to be optimized, while others were simplified game assets and needed detail work.

What made your company interested in taking on the Halo franchise and creating an opening cinematic web series for their game?

JB: The epic Halo universe, the geek factor, science fiction and space, the storyline, the darkness, the mood and the chance to work on an unusual format of creating five individual title sequences – these were all big factors. And then we were pretty stoked to be given the chance to add our little part to the vast amount of artwork that has formed Halo over the years.

Taking on an IP as big as Halo must have come with some pretty unique challenges to keep the storyline and timeline in order. What sort of hurdles did you have to overcome to match everything up?

JB: We did a lot of research on facts and trivia concerning the world of Halo before we started working on the script so that everything was seamless.

Of course we were eager to implement our style and new elements into the Halo glossary — the Cortana Rampancy for example. We had a bit of back and forth about designing the elements of the data sphere and the way the rampancy should look.

Did you have much creative freedom with the project? What sort of things were provided and what were some of the freedoms you enjoyed?

JB: 343 Industries provided us with most of the CG assets which we had to bring together on an equal production level. Some elements where very high poly and had to be optimized, while others were simplified game assets and needed detail work. Besides that, we received style sheets on how to treat certain elements, what to do and what to avoid.

I think the biggest creative freedom besides the creation of the Cortana Rampancy was probably the influence we have through our way of storytelling. We wanted to honor the slow-paced features of a title sequence while at the same time progress in a storyline. The show director Stewart Hendler and 343 Industries where very open to our approach and ideas.

The Cortana rampancy simulations look great! What software did you use for all of the simulations? How difficult was the R&D and were you able to drive the creative force behind the look and feel?

FP: We used Softimage ICE for almost all our effects work. The rampancy is actually not simulated, but a combination of procedural modeling and some keyframes. Since we’ve worked on stuff similar to this in the past, the R&D came along naturally in only a couple of days and the rest was spent tweaking and animating.

In terms of look and feel, the rampancy was in fact the one thing we were able to add to the ‘Halo dictionary.’ We were very happy to design it more or less from scratch and push it through.

To further that question what sort of real life references did you look at to create that effect?

JB: To be honest, none. We studied a lot of recent effects work from “Tron” and “Prometheus.” Those specific looks were procedural animations using Processing, but since we were unfamiliar with that program at the time, we approached it in Softimage with ICE.

With a project this scope there are bound to be some issues that pop up. What were any technical limitations or frustrations your team had with the project?

JB: We struggled a bit with the optimization of the shading and lighting setup. Since this was one of our first excursions into the world of Arnold as primary renderer, we had to learn the do’s and don’ts of handling the renderings – the interior set especially took a while to be production ready.

We had to deal with huge amounts of polygons and a lot of image noise caused by a room full of metal shaders and lots of lights. And then there was all this ice, snow and frost which is a whole different story!
It took us a while to figure out a workflow that gave us the result we wanted.

The time lapse effect looks great and serves really well to further the storyline, what went into the development of that effect?

JB: We pulled some references from the web of ice growing and camera behavior during time lapse effects. We tried to implement all the little flaws that time lapse capturing characterize – things like exposure flickering and small inconsistencies in the camera movement.

The lighting looks fantastic, can you speak about any techniques you used?

JB: Heiko Schneck did a great job on creating the lighting setup for the interior set.

We used Arnold for the rendering. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to make use of any diffuse bouncing due to a lot of noise issues, resulting in the combination of an interior set with lots of lights and metallic surfaces. But Arnold is a monster when it comes to high poly counts and its shading capabilities were a big time saver.

Even beyond further reference gathering there must have been troves of concept art to deal with. What sort of inspiration did your team take when working on this project?

JB: Since the “Halo 4″ teaser was already released, we had a strong guideline on the look we needed to achieve. Story wise, the end of our work marks the start of the teaser, specifically when Master Chief wakes up. Naturally, a part of our task was to ‘blend.’ We put our efforts into detail work, refining the shaders and textures and creating a realistic mood.

The new character redesign for Cortana is very human and the Master Chief looks spectacular with tons of new detail. What sort of influence did you have on the character development or how did you reinterpret what you were given?

JB: The time we spent on the characters was mostly targeted towards Cortana’s appearance. Master Chief was an easier task – he came with all the maps so we just did some shading work and kicked him off to render.

Cortana was a different story – she was to appear photo real but very stylized. There was a lot of look development that went into her rendering and quite a bit of back and forth with the client until we settled on the final setup. But it all worked out well at the end!

We all know that both Bungie and 343 Industries/Microsoft are quite fond of hiding little gems in their projects; Are there any fun easter eggs you guys left in the project?

JB: We wish we had! We planned on implementing a bunch of little ‘die hard fan’ surprises, but at the end of production they all got chopped due to edit and shot changes and prioritizing work hours. A bit unromantic, but we do wish we could’ve made it happen.

Posted on Motionographer

Scott Benson can’t seem to stop putting out creative work, whether it’s light-hearted (Opposites, Future Trends in Motion Graphics) or helping himself and others ponder more serious themes (Rebranding, On the Subject of Depression). His music video for Rendezvous’ “The Murf” pairs a cosmic story with beautiful, stylized design that will both make you make you smile and wonder about the future.

Read on for production stills, storyboards and a Q&A with Scott here.

Posted on Motionographer

Matthias Hoegg recently joined us to answer some questions about his short film, Thursday. It’s an everyday love story in the not so distant future, where ubiquitous e-access doesn’t necessarily guarantee a connection (and some blackbirds battling technology thrown in too).

Made as his final project at the Royal College of Art, it was recently honored with a BAFTA nomination in the Short Animation category. After a successful festival run, it’s making its full-length online debut here. Huzzah!

Our interview with Matthias after the jump.

The Story

I started out wanting to make a film about everyday life in the future. I thought that a lot of sci-fi and forecasts for the next decades tend to portrait humans as rather cold and anonymous. They always seem to be completely in tune with their super-efficient high tech environment. I wanted to portray a futuristic world and add some friction, some everyday frustration that we experience when we interact with technology today, but also moments that make our mundane lives worthwhile.

With this rather loose idea of the narrative I started doing some experiments for the film’s visual style. In retrospect I also seem to have stumbled upon a lot of the inspiration for the film in one afternoon on my summer holiday visiting my sister in Calgary, Canada. I went up onto a viewing platform in the television tower in the town center and looking through the glass floor, I was struck by the systematic, grid like arrangement of the relatively new North American city. Right after that I went to a museum of the local history and discovered traditional American quilts, which became a big influence on the style as well.

The Look

A lot of these bold graphic quilt patterns seem to suggest three-dimensional geometry. Back home in London I started experimenting with a 3 dimensional interpretation of these patterns using the grid structure that is inherent in 3D. I ended up with these modular designs of the cityscapes that became the setting for Thursday.

I also explored other kinds of patterns that seemed to evoke a sense of everyday environments, like Eduardo Paolozzi’s mosaics on the walls of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. Paolozzi collaged various patterns and technical plans into what looks like big cross sections of our futuristic lives.

I was also interested in the corporate designs of Transport for London, patterns of tube seats and early adverts for public transport that present the underground as a brave new invention, which just blends into our everyday routines nowadays.

What was the production timeline like? How much time was spent in planning vs. animation? How fluid vs. locked was the edit?

I had all of my final year, from September 2009 to June 2010, at the RCA to work on Thursday. I spent the first three months coming up with designs and experimenting with 3D patterns before putting together an animatic. I did a lot of “test screenings” to get first responses, and probably did five different animatics before I arrived at something that I was happy to lock down. A lot of shots were changed, all the way through to the last minute.

How early on did sound factor into the project?

Sound was a big part of the project and I worked closely with Berlin-based Sound Designer Marian Mentrup, who I had met at the Leipzig Documentary and Animation Festival in 2009 when Thursday was in its early stages.

After seeing my grid-like designs for the cityscape Marian suggested that the soundscape could follow an equally regimented structure. He suggested that we edit the film to a metronome, so that all the shots fit into a sort of time-grid. We wanted to create the impression that the lives of the people in Thursday are organized in a very stubborn way, that they’re going through a strict routine. A lot of people have mentioned that we’ve created a perfect stereotype of a German-German collaboration, but I hope you can take it with a pinch of salt.

Working with this fixed timing reference made it possible to exchange blocks of sound and animation in the process. Often Marian would give me the sound effects for, say, the cleaning vehicle, the alarm clock or the traffic in the city, and I would do the animation based on this time reference.

What were your biggest challenges? Any happy accidents?

One of the biggest challenges was to convince people that the characters were going to work, although they’re pretty sterile and graphic and I think a lot of characterization came through the movement. I also spent a lot of the last few weeks of the project changing the shots at the very end until I came up with something that I was pleased with. I wanted some the narrative to tie up at the end without forcing a conclusion.

A lot of the sound effects were developed by Marian, playing around on his newly bought analog synthesizer. I was a bit skeptical about his improvisations at first, but it turned out to be a really handy way of blocking out the atmosphere for each shot in real time.

What are you personal feelings on cities?

I’d be scared not to live in a big city. If your neighbors don’t know you they’re not going to judge you for staying in your bedroom for two months to finish your graduation film.

In lieu of a celestial viewing room, where would you take someone on a date?

My most recent date with my girlfriend was a long walk through the docklands in East London, past the Thames Flood Barrier, the Tate and Lyle Sugar Factory and a big rusty Recycling Plant, all the places that are normally hidden from view. The biggest benefits was that it looked nothing like the London we see every day. Anywhere to get a bit of perspective, even if it’s not up in space…

Where I didn’t take my girlfriend was the BAFTAs, something I’ll probably be made to regret for a long time. Apparently I have a particular sort of blindness when it comes to spotting celebs, which is no help in a situation like that at all, and she would have been pretty happy to help out. I took Marian instead, which seemed fair, seeing as he made one half of the film.

Why Thursday?

I called it Thursday because I wanted a title that evokes a very mundane, familiar setting. Thursday is approaching the weekend, so you might treat yourself to a little escape from your everyday life, knowing you’ll still have to come back to it the next day. I also considered calling it “Lovebirds”. My last film was called August. The titles seemed to work for the films, although I should really try to snap out of the pattern of using time descriptions next time.

What are you up to next?

At the moment I’m directing two spring-themed sequences for Cbeebies, the Pre-School Kids’ branch of the BBC. It’s character based, 2D and quite snappy, cutesy and colorful stuff and very fun and refreshing to work on.

I’ve also been experimenting with Raster or Picket Fence Animation, the process where you merge several frames of animation into a single still image which animates by dragging a grid across it. I’d like to develop this into a sort of Animation/Graphic Novel hybrid.

I’d definitely like to make another Short Film a little further down the line, which will be a lot more open in terms of technique and will probably involve camera and object tracking and more loose, graphic imagery.

Right now my emphasis is more on commissioned work though and when I’m not directing at Beakus I’m freelancing at different places in London, from more traditional animation studios through to branding and motion graphics. I’m really happy to live in London, where it’s possible to jump between companies and keep developing your work in different contexts.

If you’re lucky enough to be in one of the following cities, Thursday (and some other great shorts) will be on the big screen at these upcoming festivals:

April 12 – 17: Filmfest Dresden, Germany
April 26 – May 1: AniFest 2011, Prague, Czech Republic, in competition
May 3 – 8: 18 Internationales Trickfilm Festival Stuttgart (ITFS), Stuttgart, Germany, in Student Film Competition
May 3 – 8: Animayo, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
June 6 – 11: Annecy International Animation Festival, Annecy, France

Credits
Sound Design and Music by Marian Mentrup
“Thursday’s Space Waltz” written and performed by Marian Mentrup
Published by Kobrow Musikverlag
Additional Animation by Aaron Lampert
Additional Modeling by Mattias Bjurström
Foley Artist Günther Röhn
Mixed at Talking Animals Studio Berlin

Thank You:
RCA Animation 2010, Lauri Warsta, Kristian Andrews, Sylvie Bringas, Sergio Cameira, Tony Fish, Tim Webb, Deborah Levy, Jenny Bull, Steve Smith, Rotor Film Berlin, Passion Pictures, Anette Jung

© Royal College of Art and Matthias Hoegg
2010

Posted on Motionographer