This advert required alot of rig removal due to the fact the wrong kind of remote fire engine was sourced by the film company. It was meant to be a wireless remote control. In this shot you see the red wire leading to the remote control, one on the rear raising it into the air and one on the front to pull it forward as it often did not move very well. To make matters more complicated the shot was not held but free roaming moving towards the shot. The 2nd shot shows the scene after rig removal, next followed another problem. The client felt the cat flap was large enough to fit the children thru and hence not needing the fire engine so the door trap needed shrinking, also the white rope of the fire engine was traced so it could be more visible. Next the bunny had his tones applied and placed in behind the boy. Some rotoscoping of the fire engine was required to place it in front of the bunny. Finally Quicky had his hands placed over the red engine and occasionally over the boy. Various other shadows were painted in to help integrate him better.
Composite Breakdown – Nesquik “Catapult”
We start with the original shot. On the 2nd slide the 3D box has been tracked into position (the shot originally had a loose movement to it). Next we have a branch that was art worked to fit the scene attached to the tree, the box has been placed behind the branch and integrated more. The earlier scenes of the advert had some really nice artifacts from where the sun was shining thru the trees, we wanted this also in this shot. The 4th slide shows the start of this light being placed in, various masks and colours added to replicate the earlier shot. Following this still we have the 3D ball placed in and also some light painted onto the tree and box. Finally there is a lensflare.
CCTP – Optimum Triple Play
This was a job completed at BEanimation
Work required
This was completed at 1080p HD (this version is the SD version). Because of the lengths of the advert and the size of the frames it did require a little more planning of time. We had the animator from the guiness hand adverts create some clips for us for the stop motion hand. The “drawn” animation was done by 2 flash artist’s. Myself and another compositer keyed, and rotoscoped the stop motion hands. Whilst the flash animation was being worked on I was able to start to position and occasionally retime various hand clips to match the animation from the flash artists. Later on once the animation had been approved the final details were added. These included adding texture and roughness to the line and also drop shadows on the hands. There were initially two 60 seconds and two 30 seconds adverts, which later followed with a version slightly adapted, this included another 60 and 30 second.
Nesquik – Animal Kingdom
This was a job completed at BEanimation
Work required
Quiky (the rabbit) was placed into the various shots during linetest stage, and later had his tones applied these are various matte runs for shadows, highlights and also in this advert a shadow pass that gave the impression he was receiving shadows being cast from high up in the trees. Quiky was graded to match the scenes and also integrated (drawn shadows, masking out trees so he walks behind them etc.)
Shot 4 (quiky appearing from behind the tree trunks) required the middle tree to be artworked to look like the others. It was dug up from somewhere else and planted the wrong way round so you could see it was weathered differently, they felt it could do with a little more light hitting it so this was also artworked in post production.
Shots 11 and 12 (Quiky arriving at the tree house), had the outside grass, and ladder created afterwards. During the live action shoot this was just a solid floor. The CDs that the girl is waving in shot 12 were also replaced with clearer artwork and slightly larger.
Shots 13 and 14, had the game footage placed into the computer monitors. This involved tracking and masking. the footage was treated to the clients liking to integrate it.
Most of the shots required some form of tracking to lock Quiky into the scene or to speed up any rotoscoping. They liked the feeling that the live action Director gave with his trademark loose camera work but this did not impact to much on my work afterwards. There were many areas to get a good track from.
Various versions were mastered to Digi-Beta and delivered to the client.
HSS – Elite Athletes
This was a job completed at BEanimation.
Work required
The animation was roughed out in house as drawn animation, this was scanned in and would be my guide for recreating the piece in flash. The backgrounds were laid out in After Effects 3d which allowed me to light the scene and cast shadows. There were times for example when the character swings his racket that it would of gone through the 3d floor plane so these points needed to be fixed (I used a blank adjustment layer and then the character on top again, the adjustment layer effectively flattens everything even though it is 3d). There were also some cast shadows that I changed so his feet looked planted to the ground but also looked spaced apart from each other (an example would be at 4seconds).
Nesquik – Catapult
This was a job completed at BEanimation.
Work required
During this production I was involved in all aspects from linetest to final post production. This advert I was also asked to create some 3d props. The pack that flies into the air (shots 4,5, and 7) and also the football that is catapulted into the trees and bounces around (shots 13, 14, and 16). There was rig removal notably on the shots where Quiky is pulling back the catapult. Shot 16 (ball bouncing around the tree) was also lit in post production to match earlier shots where you could see the sun shining through the trees. Quiky had his tones applied and graded accordingly and various cast shadows drawn in to integrate him into the scenes.
Chocapic – Abyss
This was a job completed at BEanimation.
Work required
I was compositing on this job, it entailed treating alot of the 3d artwork. The first group of shots of the sea had entire new skies placed in to look more moody and with a stronger storm feeling. Alot of the 3d elements needed better integration into the shots with colour grading, we added quite a few camera effects in post different depth of field blurs on shots. Shot 4 (wave crashing into the boat) was some stock footage that we purchased, it was masked out positioned and distorted to create the feel we wanted. This had alot of treatment to it so that the whites of the wave looked fluffy white and so that it matched the 3d sea. There were various shadows painted onto the boat to help integrate the wave better. Shot 7 (the chocolate swirl) was created in lightwave (by a freelancer) but had a few issues the shape and twirl was working well but the middle had an awkward shape that needed to be fixed in post. Also the render was not looking as “wet” as this final version, it was graded substantially with various passes extracted from the original render to produce the final look.
The underwater scenes had alot of bubbles added and little plant life placed in. The red fish in various scene were modeled and setup for animation in Lightwave. These jobs normally have about 12 different versions for different countries and a cut down of 20seconds created. These are all played out to a digi-beta
Nintendo DS – Purr Pals
This was a job completed at The Victorians.
Work required
I was involved in compositing the game footage into the HD live action, the advert was finished at Standard Definition so this allowed alot of freedom with reframing shots. There were in total about 7 shots that required new game footage placed in. This video is just one of the final adverts. Some of the game shots were reanimated so they worked better with the pen movement. The final masters were laid of to Digi-Beta
Me Me Me
This was something I put together one weekend. I was curious to test out some virtual cameras in After Effects (AE) and a good old fashioned cloning test seemed appropriate. The camera was mounted to a tripod and various shots taken of myself. These video clips were then placed in 3d so that they join next to each other. I could then place a camera inside of the circular perimeter of video clips and rotate and zoom however I felt. There was also some masking required as occasionally I overlap my clones. I did make the mistake of allowing the camera to white balance automatically and got some rather large colour shifts as the shots move around, I was not really in the mood to tackle that problem :- P
BBC – Dangerous Love
This was a job completed at BEanimation.
Work required
3 of about 10 animations that where to be placed into a documentary about violence in the home. The animation was drawn traditionally and later artworked by hand with pastels. The larger spaces we created in After Effects (AE) from various textures. On these examples I also drew many masks to add more shade and form to the coloured artwork. These mask would animate in size, opacity and softness to have the feeling of boiling like the pastel work. The example of the girl was entirely coloured in AE, various colours were isolated and textured and the shadow of the man drawn also in the application.