Heinz Pasta Pouch

January 19, 2012 by

This was a job completed at Tandem Films

Work required
I worked on a few shots for this advert, but my main shot starts at about 12 seconds.  In this shot the carrot dives onto the grater leaving specks of carrot on the table for the small brush to sweep up.  The shots were filmed with an Arri camera, and for the stop motion Dragon was used.  I had four shots that made up this sequence, a background plate, one with the tomatoes moving in the bowl, the brush sweeping, and the grater and carrot.  Each item had a metal rig to allow it to be animated these were quite large and had a tendency to cast shadows across the set also making it difficult to isolate the objects shadows.  Rather than the traditional method of removing the rig to show through the clean background I opted to cut out the objects.  This was decided after a quick test, I realized that all the soft shadows from the rigging would also need removing and the two pieces of video were not matching seamlessly.  Once each  item had been isolated, I worked on creating the shadows that were in the original shots.  These were mostly roto’d in using soft masks and an adjustment layer but some original shadows were kept.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Imagineer Systems, Mocha, Postproduction, Rotoscoping, Stop Motion, Work-Journal

Currys / PC World Advert

January 17, 2012 by


This was a job completed at Tandem Films

Work required
I did some rotoscoping on this job, the 3d glasses, and the shots after 21 seconds (LCD TV, and remote control).  The on screen interface was also created by myself and animated to look like it was being controlled.  The depth of field effect in this shot was added in post.  There was a fix on the live action where the TV is mounted on the wall.  Originally the wall it was mounted onto wobbled slightly so I stabilized the TV and mount to make it look like it was mounted onto a solid brick wall.
Tandem did 8 adverts in total, each requiring rotoscoping, I helped out on the last two.  The other advert I worked on had a laptop, which required me to create a PC desktop that looked generic and animated.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Rotoscoping, Work-Journal

Comet – Sponsers Christmas Entertainment “Laptop”

January 17, 2012 by


This was a job completed at Airside

Work required
I worked on this Advert with Charles Beglan who was involved in creating the 3d sets.  We knew we would need a 3d track of the live action, therefore during the filming we were on set to supervise the vfx preparation.  This involved taking measurements and layouts of important parts of the set, recording camera and lens data, and making sure we had trackers in view and enough parallax to assist the 3d tracking.
I prepared the footage, and did the matchmove using syntheyes 2011.  For these I supplied Charles a 3d camera, and stand in objects of the sofa and foot stool in a Maya scene.  With regards to rotoscoping I had two assistants that I was able to delegate work to.  I used the matchmove to assist with the rotoscoping by importing the data into After Effects and placing solids in 3d space near the areas I needed to cut out.  Most of the rotoscoping was broken down and roughly keyed before being handed out to the assistants.
I worked the treatment of the man sat down to match the clients vision.  This was all comped together to produce the final piece.  The post production company Nice Biscuits were involved in making the different versions and created the Laptop content.

Filed Under: 3d, Advert, AE, Postproduction, Work-Journal

Westfields Christmas 2011 TV Advert – Breakdown

December 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The video is a presentation of how two shots were cleaned up and some of the processes I used to speed up my work.


Each toy was brought to life by three puppeteers that required removing in post production. This did involve selectively keeping parts of the background in place or patching in areas that were always covered by the puppeteers as the set was being moved about slightly during each take. Most objects were tracked very roughly to give me the basic motion, this motion was then attached to my mask. this workflow meant I only had to concentrate on how the objects changed shape whilst in motion and not be concerned with the movement.
The shot of the teddy bear that runs towards camera was stabilized first. I tracked the teddy’s movement using Mocha by drawing a shape around his larger areas that had the bulk of the main movement (his head & body). This was imported into after effects and was used to stabilize the plate. I then created my roto’s on a layer above, as the teddy was stabilized I did not need to concern myself with scaling and movement of the mask as much as if it was the original shot. The masked layer then had the inverse stabilization applied (via some scripts) and used as a mask to cut the original footage out. If there had been stronger motion blur on the footage I might not of done it this way, because the footage is stabilized the masks are not moving as much as they really would have so the built in after effects motion blur will not be as strong. I did however apply a gentle reelsmart motion blur to the final matte to help compensate for this.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Breakdowns, Imagineer Systems, Mocha, Postproduction, Rotoscoping, Work-Journal Tagged With: , , ,

Raid – The Way Bugs See It

March 22, 2011 by


This was a job completed at Uli Meyer

Work required
I worked on the first seven shots compositing the characters into the background plate.  A shallow depth of field was created on the 2d drawings by painting our own depth mattes, this involved some amount of rotoscoping and specific paint and trace instructions, the same was done with the background so we could shift the focus through out the shot.
The product shots had the spray on barrier produced in 3d using Maya, we worked closely with the 3d artist to produce matte runs and passes required to create the look the client was after.
The explosions were added after by Dave Walker who also completed the last shots and over saw the project.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal

Mocha Pro – Arm removal

March 22, 2011 by

This was a job completed at Be Animation

Work required
This is just one example of the removals that were required in this advert.  I used the imagineer products to speed up rotoscoping and the process of removing any rigging.  We were not exactly sure how much of the drawn Nesquik bunny would cover the rigs so I was removing as much as possible in each shot to give more flexibilty later.  Any matte runs required per shot were rotoscoped and rendered as individual passes. 

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Breakdowns, Imagineer Systems, Mocha, Shortform

Honey Cheerio’s – Never Give Up

June 16, 2010 by

This was a job completed at Uli Meyer

Work required

I was working on the post production of this advert along side David Walker.  We were compositing multi pass renders and integrating the character into the live action backgrounds, most of my completed shots are after 8 seconds.
Extra 2d displacements were added to show the feeling of displaced air.  The product pieces were 3d and had a lot of attention to get them just how the client wanted.  We worked along side the client for two days making final color tweaks and adjusting details.

 

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal

Kelloggs – Mr Kelloggs, Vitamins And Iron

January 25, 2010 by

This was a job completed at Beglan Brothers

Work required
I completed some of the post production on this advert.  We were shooting 4K stop motion stills and grading with the raw camera files.  Some flicker had to be removed from the shots, and also the occasional “clean up” that is required in stop motion ie rigging removed or taking away accidental blemishes.  There was also a lot of rotoscoping required, and keying to introduce the shots outside of the windows.  The shots were lit to feel like a sunny morning in post.  There is also some invisible work in the live action shots.  The kitchen did not have tiles to the very bottom so these were placed in after, as well as the daughter behind the packs being removed and the re positioning of the chalk board to be more title safe.
I also worked on one of the press stills, this involved similar compositing to the advert but more precision and more clean up of the model and his enviroment, as everything was staying at a higher pixel dimension.

Beglan Brothers website, www.beglanbros.com

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal

Boyles Sports – Sponsorship

January 25, 2010 by

This was a job completed for Mark Holland

Work required
Mark already had an idea visually as to how this was going to work, and with some stock footage edited the shots together.  I was to take his edit and mood image and produce the final piece, with Mark making final Director decisions.
The footage I was given was not shot for keying, so some rotoscoping was required and some clever keying in sections of the shots.  The original ball was removed and the red one placed in with betting odds.  Extra overlapping details were masked in to help integrate the ball better with the footballer.  This was a quick turnaround initially 2 days, there were some extra comments and changes made and all up we were done with masters in under a working week.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal

Wolfblass – Sponsors Rugby

January 25, 2010 by

This was a job completed for Mark Holland

Work required
I worked on the treatment for the rugby section to match what was supplied from the previous advert.  We also required a new pack shot.  This was put together in After Effects 3d and consisted of photographs that were treated to blend seamlessly.  Lens blurs and gentle light interactions help keep the shot alive.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Shortform, Work-Journal
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