Various jobs whilst at Glassworks (London)

From August 2015 I spent 4 months working at Glassworks on multiple jobs.  Initially I was brought in to work on a Doir commercial that I believe was aimed at tablet/website style adverts.  I was tasked with the beauty work required on the 3 commercials.  Shortly after this project finished I was moved over to a video for Samsung.  Compositing various greenscreen shots and tracking in screens.  Some of these used camera tracking data to speed up roto work and the placement of said screens.
I was then moved on to a job I had been keeping my eye on, some colleagues around me were working on the new music video for The Shoes titled Submarine.  It interested me because all the VFX work on the people in the video was being done in 2D and had to be very clean as it was mostly slow motion.  I worked on various shots for this video but the one I enjoyed the most was the slow motion punch shot at 3:15 minutes.  The face that gets hit distorts visibly requiring the artwork and paintwork to be tracked and warped very carefully to keep the form of the face.  This video was constantly asking for the highest quality of compositing and there was no room for cheating.  Once the music video was finished I had a quick stint on a PS4 commercial tweaking a shot that the client wanted changes made to.
The final job I worked on during this 4 month period was an exciting Oculus Rift 360 degree VR experience directed by Chris Cunningham.   The job required a fair amount of cleanup work and preparation of animated textures built from live action miniatures, using just small portions of each take.  These were then rendered through Nukes scanline renderer to create the illusion that the elements were locked to the live actions movements.  The piece from memory is over 4 minutes and very quickly become the job that was filling all of Glassworks server and resources.  Hopefully it will be released to the public in the near future and I can highly recommend viewing it when that happens.

Below is a video of The Shoes “Submarine”

Visual Concept For Wordsearch.co.uk

This was a job completed at Wordsearch (fullscreen video for full image quality)

Work required
The animation was created entirely in after effects.  I did make use of some 3rd party plugin’s that I own to help with some of the effects, and speed up my workflow.
I was given a concept image from a different shot to work from and a brief of what was to happen.  The live action of the gentleman walking into shot with a green screen behind him was also supplied.  All the artwork was created in photoshop or inside of after effects.  This was a quick turn around of about three days including tweaking and client feedback.

Raid – The Way Bugs See It


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.

Mocha Pro – Arm removal

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. 

Honey Cheerio’s – Never Give Up

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.

 

Kelloggs – Mr Kelloggs, Vitamins And Iron

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

Boyles Sports – Sponsorship

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.

Wolfblass – Sponsors Rugby

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.

Chocapic – Free Falling

This was a job completed at Beanimation

Work required
3D Backgrounds where by Arkvfx.  I was involved in the compositing of the characters and color grading.  We supplied a cutdown and various other countries versions of the advert.

The Guardian – Great British Walks

This was a job completed at Tandem Films

Work required
There was a small team of us brought in to rotoscope various shoes.  The shoes were animated stop motion style against a blue screen but it was felt that the screen was not going to give a good enough key for our use.  The shoes were rotoscoped from there background and some rigging inside the shoes removed.  Shadows were also masked out to be used in the final composite.  there was some initial colour grading and spill removal on this footage, which was passed onto Chris Gavin who completed the final composite.