Hasta La Motion!

[NEWS=”http://www.cgnews.com/wp-content/uploads/verizon_boat_thumb.jpg”]22575[/NEWS]Asylum’s VFX team in collaboration with mcgarry bowen and MJZ’s Rupert Sanders recently completed work on a spectacular spot launching Verizon’s highly anticipated Droid smartphone. The: 60 features incredible CG environments that showcase Asylum’s incomparable expertise in creating realistic FX, this time embedded within a suspenseful and visually stunning narrative. Stealth begins with a squadron of stealth bombers thundering through a cloud-filled sky and launching a salvo of small pods toward earth, a beautiful scene rendered entirely in CGI. From the ground bewildered ranchers, lumberjacks, fishermen, and others watch the pods simmer through the sky, CGI smoke trails marking their path.

The mountaintops, prairies, and mid-ocean landscape that the observers watch from are stunning panoramas created in Maya, Terragen, Renderman, BodyPaint, and others, and then composited in Nuke using multiple floating-point, linear light passes.

The pods explode into the ground – an effect achieved with a combination of live action and Flame composite. The contraptions survive in one piece, however, and when the live-action pod spins open, a shimmering CGI backdrop outlines the glowing Droid phone, also done in CGI.

Asylum packaged all of this footage into a custom interface that controlled the comp process and guaranteed a consistent look from shot to shot. They created an additional custom UI tool in Nuke to create the lens flare and lighting effects that incorporate realistic camera motion, reflections, and light leaks. Previsualization was built as a combination of 3D animation and reference footage taken from multiple sources.

Asylum is a premier visual effects and design company, handling high-profile features, commercials, music videos, and emerging media content for web and mobile platforms. Asylum created the visual effects for such films as the upcoming Terminator Salvation, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pirates Of The Caribbean ll & lll, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (Academy Award and BAFTA nominated), Moulin Rouge, Minority Report, Phantom Of The Opera, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, Tony Scott’s déjà vu, Man on Fire & Domino and Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down.

Asylum has done spot work for brands such as Hershey’s, Nike, Sony Playstation, Coke, BMW, Gatorade and Apple. In addition, Asylum Design has created award winning title and graphic design work for such films as Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Bedtime Stories, X-Men I & II, The Island, Bad Boys II and XXX.

CREDITS
Client: Verizon
Spots Title: Stealth
Air Date: November 2009

Agency: mcgarrybowen, New York
Executive Creative Director: Mark Koelfgen
Executive Creative Director: Warren Eakins
Copywriter: Tiffany Smith
Art Director: Michael Cannova
Head of Broadcast Production: Rosanne Horn

Production Company: MJZ, Los Angeles
Director: Rupert Sanders
Executive Producer: Eric Stern
Director of Photography: Alwin Kuchler
Line Producer: Laurie Boccaccio

Editorial Company: Spot Welders
Editor: Neil Smith

Post/Effects: Asylum
Visual Effects Supervisor: Robert Moggach
Executive Producer: Michael Pardee
Producer: Jason Cohon
Coordinator: Diana Cheng
CG Producer: Jeff Werner
CG Supervisor: Jens Zalzala
Compositing Lead: Miles Essmiller
Lead Modeler: Greg Stuhl

Music: Q Department
Sound Designer: Brian Emrich
Sound Design Company: Trinitite Studios

Mix: Lime
Mixer: Loren Silber

RELATED LINKS
www.asylumfx.com