Hasta La Motion!

[NEWS=”http://www.cgnews.com/wp-content/uploads/dragon_thumb.jpg”]24976[/NEWS]Swedish digital production company Bobby created an incredible piece of animation for the 2010 Göteborg International Film Festival at the start of the year. ‘Dragon’ is a special short produced as an intro and played before each and every film screened at the festival. After a total of approximately 800 plays, it received a great deal of attention and was appreciated by the GIFF crowds.

Dragon is a collaboration between Bobby and festivals agency SCP. The idea grew from the GIFF logo which is a full grown dragon, and was inspired by the 1960’s foetus photos created by the Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson.

“In the beginning of the film we wanted to get a nice underwater feeling, with anemones and corals. When we first get a glimpse of the foetus the feeling should be that it is a human and the surprise comes when we show the wings and the whole dragon” explained Bobby animator Richard Blank.

The first challenge was to design the dragon foetus within its surroundings and the Bobby team used different animal foetuses, including crocodiles and birds, for reference.

It was essential that the foetus appeared believable and not plastic or artificial, so the animators worked hard to create a sound sub surface scattering, whilst keeping the render time down. Depth of field was also important to ensure a macro feeling to the piece.

Z-Brush and 3ds Max were used for modelling, all animation was created in Maya; rendering was produced using V-Ray, compositing with Nuke.

About Bobby
Bobby is a digital production company that helps leading brands and agencies to develop and visualize communication ideas for film and interactive media.Bobby consists of designers, directors, artists and producers with a strong focus on motion media.

About Göteborg International Film Festival
GIFF is the biggest film festival in Scandinavia, and with audience figures of over 200,000 each year, is one of the largest events in the annual festival calendar. GIFF offers a film and seminar programme alongside concerts, performances and parties; and encourages new talent with two exciting international competitions: The Dragon Award and The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award.

CREDITS
Creative Director/Director: Fredrik Swerin
Concept: Tommy Östberg (SCP)
Shading/Compositor: Richard Blank
Animation: Richard Blank & Fredrik Swerin
Modeling: Thomas Feiner
Particles: Anders Håkansson

RELATED LINKS
www.bobby.se
www.giff.se