A joint effort where character modelling skills and environment creation combine to create a fun image. Buon appetito!

Artist: Amir Akbarshahi and Navid Khezli
Title: Dinner Dream
Software: 3ds Max, V-Ray, After Effects

Amir Akbarshahi says: “In my career, I work on animation and special effects projects, and have experience in other areas of 3D. I take my inspiration from life in general, and from things I see in my environment.

My friend Navid Khezli and I created this image, which we call ‘Dinner Dream’. Navid made the character model, and I created the location, shaders for the character and objects in the scene, plus I did the lighting, compositing and rendering. To composite the image, I used five render passes.

“I used 3ds Max to create the scene, composited the image in After Effects and rendered with V-Ray. I also used some models from www.evermotion.org. It took us about four days in total to finish the project. I wanted to immortalise the image of a gluttonous boy eating his dream meal!”

Get published

If you would like to see your work featured in 3D World, email us, attaching a low-res version of the image.

Get a taste of Scandinavian cool with this Dieter Rams-inspired piece of interior design from Sweden

Artist: Bertrand Benoit
Title: Old Vicarage
Software: 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop, After Effects, Magic Bullet PhotoLooks, Nik Color Efex, Kronos, RSMB Pro, ft-Cubic Lens Distortion, ft-Filmic Contrast, ft-Vignetting Pro

“Old Vicarage is my personal take on a recently renovated vicarage in the south of Sweden. It was a portfolio piece, done as a personal project to test a high-key style that’s popular in the Scandinavian interior styling scene. It’s also homage to designer Dieter Rams, who designed the shelving systems, armchair, sofa, coffee table and record player. It took me a month or two to complete the project, working on and off in the evening.

“The stills were rendered a lot darker than in the final image, which meant fewer ray bounces on the white walls and therefore faster render times at the expense of some grain in the darker areas. Then the images were lightened in Photoshop, mainly using Nik Color Efex.

“For the video, I rendered only 50-frame sequences, which I then stretched to 200 frames per sequence using Kronos. I also stored the main V-Ray DomeLight – HDR Sky – with the irradiance map, which brought my render times down to four or five minutes per frame. Of course, the final result doesn’t have the sharpness and clarity of the stills.”

Characters by Tristan Bethe from www.humanalloy.com. HDR light map by Peter Guthrie. Furniture design by Dieter Rams

See 10 stunning pieces of still life photography at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

Be inspired! Check out this show-stopping 3D illustration by 3D World reader, inpspired by French illustrator Fabrice Backes

Artist: Pascal Ackermann
Title: Fille Fleur
Software: ZBrush, 3ds Max, mental ray, Photoshop, After Effects

▲ Fille Fleur is Pascal’s homage to French illustrator Fabrice Backes

“I’m the lead 3D artist at online game studio Actiplay in Montpellier, France. I like to create illustrations in my spare time to improve my skills and share my work. This image is based closely on a piece of work created by Fabrice Backes, a great French illustrator, so it was cool to make this tribute. It’s difficult to say how long this image took me to create; I’d say about six days. I mostly get my inspiration from a great concept, an original character, or from an illustration that includes elements of storytelling. In fact, there are so many great artists on the web that they inspire not only me, but a lot of other people too!”

A renovation of a vicarage was the inspiration for this spectacular architectural visualisation. The artist tells us all…

Artist: Bertrand Benoit
Title: Old Vicarage
Software: 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop, After Effects, Magic Bullet PhotoLooks, Nik Color Efex, Kronos, RSMB Pro, ft-Cubic Lens Distortion, ft-Filmic Contrast, ft-Vignetting Pro

▲ Bertrand aimed for a high-key lighting style popular in Scandinavia

“Old Vicarage is my personal take on a recently renovated vicarage in the south of Sweden. It was a portfolio piece, done as a personal project to test a high-key style that’s popular in the Scandinavian interior styling scene. It’s also homage to designer Dieter Rams, who designed the shelving systems, armchair, sofa, coffee table and record player. It took me a month or two to complete the project, working on and off in the evening.

▲ Love, love, love this bedroom!

“The stills were rendered a lot darker than in the final image, which meant fewer ray bounces on the white walls and therefore faster render times at the expense of some grain in the darker areas. Then the images were lightened in Photoshop, mainly using Nik Color Efex.

“For the video, I rendered only 50-frame sequences, which I then stretched to 200 frames per sequence using Kronos. I also stored the main V-Ray DomeLight – HDR Sky – with the irradiance map, which brought my render times down to four or five minutes per frame. Of course, the final result doesn’t have the sharpness and clarity of the stills.”

Maxon today revealed the first step in delivering a new level of integration between Cinema 4D and After Effects…

Maxon announced a new live 3D pipeline between C4D and AE, earlier today.

The recently revealed next release of Adobe’s industry-leading software will include two Maxon technologies directly within the new After Effects: Cineware and Cinema 4D Lite.

Sneak peeks: Please visit: adobe.com/go/nab_reveal or visit the Maxon Cineware page

• Read a review of Cinema 4D
• Read a review of After Effects CS6

The bridge: Cineware

The 3D pipeline between C4D and AE, which eliminates intermediate rendering between applications, is made possible by Cineware, which establishes a bridge between the two apps.

This should give a more streamlined workflow, enabling you to not only to import native Cinema 4D scenes directly as assets into After Effects, but also to utilise C4D’s multi-pass workflow as layers.

Cineware makes Cinema 4D’s Advanced Rendering Engine available directly inside After Effects, so you’ll be able to see the changes in real-time.

Greyscalegorilla’s Nick Campbell says: “Now, instead of waiting for a 3D render to come out of Cinema 4D, I can drop that Cinema file into After Effects and start to composite, colour correct and add all those extra things that I do in After Effects directly on top of my 3D project.

“The ability to have Cinema 4D inside After Effects speeds up the whole workflow like crazy.

“If there’s a change, I don’t have to go back and re-render my 3D scene. I can go back to my Cinema 4D file, make the changes, and it’s updated right away in After Effects. I think that’s huge.”

Follow a Cinema 4D tutorial

The image at the top of this page is from a motion graphics tutorial that is free online for you to follow. Develop your skills today!
Create brilliant motion graphics in Cinema 4D

Source: Business Wire 2013

The Halo 4 Spartan Ops game trailer series is Axis’s most ambitious project to date. Executive producer and MD Richard Scott reveals why

We had been working with Microsoft Game Studios for over two years on a number of different projects, so we’d always hoped we’d get a crack at being involved with Halo. It’s such a massive brand in the games world.

We were first approached by the Halo development team 343 Industries, and we were asked to create a proposal for how we could tackle a ten-episode series. We set to work on treatments, creative ideas and style frames that proposed a range of approaches from stylised 2D animation to a mix of live action and CGI.

From here we were asked to consider how we’d approach a photorealistic CGI approach, which is a big challenge for any studio. Axis Animation owner and the director of Halo 4 Spartan Ops Stu Aitken was really excited about this idea, and started to plan an approach, alongside senior producer Debbie Ross, CG supervisor Sergio Caires and department leads John Barclay, Bruce Sutherland, Nicholas Pliatsikas, Marco Godinho and Andy Miller.

What went right

1. We did as much pre-production as possible within the schedule

The sheer scale of the project was like nothing we had done before. Over 35 characters, 20 sets, 1,200 shots, and the highest quality production values we had ever done.

This meant we needed to use pre-production time to concept, design and visualise as much of the episodes as possible before starting key parts of the work. Director Stu Aitken worked with our art directors Jon Beeston, Gareth Hector and Szymon Biernacki to create three distinct types of artwork.

The final frame of the Infinity Engine Room, showing the lighting inspired by the sequenced colour scripts

Concept designs were created for all the elements that were new. New environments such as the Infinity Hangar Bay, and new props such as communication devices were created to give the modelling team as much detail as possible. Production art was created to define the look and feel of the lighting and atmosphere in the new environments. Thumbnail colour sketches were developed to define the lighting for all the major story beats and key shots for every episode.

2. We automated as much of the workflow as possible

Our pipeline supervisor Nicholas Pilatsikas was charged with growing our pipeline development team, and defining a list of priorities for which tools should be improved and which tools should be developed from scratch.

Automating manual repeatable tasks was put very high on the list, and tools were developed to save artists repeating these processes by hand. These tasks included splitting layout scenes into shots for animation, lighting and rendering, creating animation caches and shader updates before scenes were rendered on the farm, therefore guaranteeing all caches and shaders were the most recent, and updating our tracking software Shotgun by allowing it to interrogate Maya scene data.

Ultimately, this was a drive for efficiency, to allow artists to create art and not spend so much time running scripts and waiting for processes to complete – something we’ll be applying to all of our projects from now on, no matter what their scale.

3. We wanted photorealistic characters, so we used real people

Shaded and rendered model of the Grant character. The hair was created in Maya and rendered via Houdini

A big part of the project was making convincing character performances. 343 Industries wanted the most realistic human characters we could create. The best way to do this is to cast real people and scan their heads. Costs for 3D scanning have been reduced so much since the technology’s inception, and scanning captures all those little nuances of the human face that are hard to sculpt from scratch no matter how skilled an artist you are.

Working with real people allowed us to translate the fantastic character performances to great-looking models. Motion capture was done at Giant Studios with the facial capture provided by Cubic Motion. We provided enough time in the schedule to further refine our facial rigging setup to allow for more automated setups and better quality results. Working with the scanned characters and the facial data allowed us to guarantee high quality animation across a high volume of character screen time.

What went wrong

1. We modelled detail that you didn’t see

Another big challenge with Spartan Ops was the parallel nature of the workflow. Modelling was going on at the same time as script writing and storyboarding, for example.

A side effect of this was that the modellers were working on environments without knowing exactly what was going to be seen on camera. The schedule just didn’t allow us to build proxies for every asset, do all the layout and then go back to the proxies and increase model detail where required.

This was frustrating, not only for the amount of time put in, but also for the artists to know that all their hard work, care and attention to detail doesn’t get fully appreciated in the final cuts.

The final frame of the Infinity Hangar Bay, showing motion-captured Hangar Tech characters approaching the Pelican Dropship

If we could have changed anything, it would have been to extend the schedule to allow for smarter working on these types of problems. If we could do it again, I would recommend defining cameras before adding details to models – this would have saved a lot of time.

2. Speed and consistency in shot lighting

We underestimated the amount of time it would take to light this volume of shots at high quality. We had rapidly grown our lighting team, and so there were a lot of talented new artists in the studio that had to get up to speed with our workflow.

The schedule demanded fast turnaround on the shots, and when we started out, the shots were taking twice as long to create and to get final approval as we wanted them to.

Our solution was to create time in the schedule for each of our leads to ‘package up’ the light rigs in such a way that they could be quickly re-used by other artists. This resulted in us analysing each sequence, and setting up lighting rigs for the key camera angles. These were then approved by the lighting supervisor, and rolled out to other artists to implement and refine on a per-shot basis.

Lessons learnt

Spartan Ops has been an incredible growth project for Axis. We doubled our team size, restructured their organisation, created new departments, and refined our pipeline. We learnt that creating 50 per cent of an animated feature isn’t easy. It’s given us even more respect for those who successfully create an animated film for theatrical release.

However, I think the most important thing we’ve learnt is that at this scale you need to constantly look for ways to let your artists create art, and not have them wrapped up in technical process and laborious tasks. This is the constant battle for everyone, even if you’re working on your project alone or as part of a huge animation studio.

The Engine Room concept art explores the overall layout of the room and the lighting treatments

The first five episodes of Spartan Ops were released before Christmas, and were well received by Halo fans. People have been impressed by the quality of the production values and positive about the character and story development. That’s massively important to Axis as a studio and our future goals.

VITAL STATISTICS
Studio: Axis
Format: Digitally distributed episodic series
Client: Microsoft Games Studios and 343 Industries
Time taken: One year
Team size: The team started at around 45 people and topped out at almost 100 during the most intense periods of production
Software used: Maya, Houdini, modo, ZBrush, Fusion, After Effects
Release date: 6 November 2012

Richard is one of the founders of Axis. Originally an artist himself, he became Axis MD and executive producer in 2005. As well as Halo 4 Spartan Ops, Richard has recently been involved with trailers for Aliens: Colonial Marines, GRID 2 and Until Dawn

Blair Richmond tells us about one of his recent mountain adventure films made for client Salomon Freeski. Watch The Burn here and find out how it was made

3D World: How did the brief for The Burn come about?
Blair Richmond: We produce a web-series called Salomon Freeski TV that consists of 12 short films per season. Each film is focused around freeskiing but we’re given a lot of flexibility when it comes to a storyline or theme. Usually we are pitched ideas for episodes or we pitch the ideas ourselves to our client, Salomon Freeski. This particular episode was the brain-child of the director, Jeff Thomas and myself.

3D World: What was your company responsible for?
BR: Switchback Entertainment was responsible for everything from pre-production to post. We pitched the idea to Salomon, who were a little hesitant at first, but with some convincing and some early VFX tests they quickly came on-board.

3D World: Where did you draw your inspiration from?
BR: The inspiration for the film itself came from our director, Jeff Thomas. He wanted to do a film portraying the feeling of skiing through a burn-zone (a forest previously ravaged by a forest-fire). After some brainstorming the concept developed into the cycle of a burn-zone and the idea of having the forest still burning. The inspiration for the VFX was drawn from previous projects I’ve worked on. I had a pretty good idea of how the embers and smoke should look so it was a matter of matching it with the plates we shot.

Find out more about Blair Richmond and his work in our Meet the Artist post.

3D World: What 3D software was used to create this work?
BR: The VFX pipeline was fairly simple. The pre-viz was really just showing examples of burning trees and wood. We found lots of reference online through stock video sites and even YouTube to get an idea of how the effects should look.

From there it was a matter of shooting the film itself. We spent a week at a cat-skiing lodge in the interior of British Columbia. We don’t usually have an exact script or shot-list for these films but we did have a style of shooting to adhere to. Our main goal was to make the forest as much of a subject as the athletes were.

After it was all shot we began editing the film. Jeff Thomas started with a rough edit and we decided which shots I could start VFX on. We would look at a shot and decide what I could do to the forest to make it ‘come alive’. From there I would bring the shot into The Foundry’s Nuke. 2D or 3D tracking, if need be, would be done. In some cases I used Mocha, by Imagineer Systems, for difficult tracks. I had a library of elements to pull from and manipulate to simulate the burning embers and smoke but in some rare instances I generated particles in Nuke, After Effects or Maya to get the desired look.

From there it was a matter of compositing the elements into the shot. Jeff would continue refining the edit and I would continue with VFX on each shot that was ready. When shots were ready for review our team would sit down and watch them separately and in the edit. Sometimes we would decide we needed the effect to be stronger or subtler, so I would go back and make the appropriate changes until we felt it worked.

3D World: What was the most impressive technical aspect of the project and how was it achieved using 3D software?
BR: Probably the amount of tracking needed. Some of the shots were very simple pans or tilts but others needed full 3D tracks or a combination of 2D point tracks and planar tracks. Either way Nuke’s Camera Tracker handled most of what was needed to generate a 3D camera move.

3D World: What was the most useful piece of software/kit that you used and why?
BR: The most useful software would have to be Nuke. I am primarily a compositor so I am most comfortable in Nuke but I found that it handled the 3D side of what I needed very well. Like I said earlier, tracking was the most difficult obstacle to overcome but with Nuke’s Tracker and Camera Tracker I was able to accomplish most of what was needed. Also, there was a lot of re-timing needed for different elements which I used OFlow for.

3D World: Can you think of where a specific part of the pipeline was particularly useful in fixing or achieving something?
BR: Outside specific software that was used the most crucial part of our pipeline was our form of dailies. Having our director, producer, cinematographers and VFX artist all reviewing shots at the same time really helped move the project along. We weren’t waiting on notes coming from halfway around the world and we’re all in the same office so making changes was as easy as talking to the person next to you. Our client, Salomon, had the final say on the film but all of our QC was done in-house.

3D World: What was the biggest technical challenge?
BR: The biggest technical challenge on the film was the sheer volume of shots. Five minutes of VFX is a lot, especially when you only have one artist working on it. After developing a look and a script that I could carry over to other shots it became easier to manipulate what I needed for each shot. Luckily, our review process was very simple so we didn’t need to make too many iterations of each shot to achieve the look we wanted.

3D World: Did you encounter any problems that you could share with us?
BR: I can’t think of any particular problems with the film. We had a lot of creative control and freedom so it was a fairly smooth process.

3D World: Did you use any notable techniques?
BR: The most notable technique I can think of was creating the plant-growing shots at the end of the film. This was an idea I had which was inspired from one of the BBC Planet Earth documentaries. The plate was shot on location using a slider to create a dolly-in camera move. Then the plant plate was a time-lapse shot on a blue-screen in an enclosed environment with consistent lighting.

The plant took about a week to grow. We compiled the time-lapse, retimed it and smoothed out the motion where need be. Then I keyed the plant from the blue-screen creating a matte I could use to composite it into the original plate. All the techniques were simple but it was interesting taking an idea from concept to final using many different elements of film and photography.

3D World: How long did the VFX take to complete?
BR: In total there was about five minutes of VFX shots done which took about six weeks to complete. There were a few other projects going on at the time but The Burn was my primary focus.

3D World: Would you do anything differently?
BR: I can’t think of much I would do differently.

Here is another video in the Salomon Freeski series – called Quarter Past Midnight:

Blair Richmond

Blair Richmond started his career in film working as a videographer on the film Photoplay by Theory-3 Media. After two more films with Theory-3 and contracts with High North Ski Camps and Resort TV, he moved into the world of Visual Effects. As a compositor and project coordinator, he worked on feature films, television and video games. His credits include the TV show Lost; and a film credit list including RED, Oscar-nominated Invictus, Killers, Apollo 18 and Underworld: Awakening. Blair has also worked on Mass Effect 2 & 3 and a web-series that won Best VFX at the International Academy of Web Television Awards – called H+: The Digital Series. Now, as a member of Switchback Entertainment, he brings a VFX approach to the world of mountain and adventure film production.

Find out more about Blair Richmond and his work in our Meet the Artist post.

After a career working on productions including Lost, Invictus and Apollo 8, Blair Richmond is now bringing his VFX skills to the world of mountain adventure film production. Blair tells us about his work and inspirations

3D World: How did you break into the industry?
Blair Richmond: I took a one-year intensive Visual Effects program at VanArts. From there I met my first employer, Chris Van Dyck. He was my compositing instructor and offered me a position at his studio, Faction Creative, as I was finishing up the program.

3D World: What first inspired you to become a 3D artist?
BR: I’ve always been interested in manipulating images in both 2D and 3D software. This began with still images using Photoshop which led to After Effects. Then, during school I learned Nuke and Maya, and outside of school I kept up my training online with tutorials in Cinema 4D. I think I’ve always had an interest in creating images digitally that emulate reality. A lot of filmmakers see VFX as cheating whereas I see it as a new tool to manifest images from my imagination.

GETTING STARTED IN VFX

3D World: At what point in your life did you make the decision that that’s what you were going to do?
BR: I started in film on the production side, shooting video and directing small projects but I always had a stronger interest in post. When I felt it was time to do some more post-secondary education, the natural step was to go into an area of film, but I wanted to learn something new and specific. VFX was the natural step for me. Combining my knowledge of film and photography and my interest in manipulating images digitally brought me to VFX. Currently, at Switchback Entertainment, I’m able to work on projects from pre-production right through to post, letting me use all skills and knowledge in various stages of the filmmaking process.

3D World: Where did you study, and what was the course? Or were you self-taught?
BR: I took a one-year intensive Visual Effects program at VanArts. The program was great to get started in the industry. We learned everything from 3D modelling, animation and rendering to matte-painting and compositing. About halfway through the program students began to find their specialities and focus on certain positions within VFX.

3D World: What do you do and where?
BR: I currently work at Switchback Entertainment in Whistler, BC, Canada. We’re a small production company that produces action-sports related films and commercial work.

Blair Richmond Compositing Reel 2012 from Blair Richmond on Vimeo.

3D World: How have you progressed there?
BR: I started working in VFX at Faction Creative, a boutique VFX studio based in Vancouver, BC. A lot of our early work was overflow from larger studios but we started to make a name by doing VFX on the cinematics for the Mass Effect video game franchise. The last project I worked on at Faction was the web-series H+ The Digital Series, which recently picked up the awards for Best Direction and Best Action or Sci-Fi Series at the Streamy Awards and Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects at the International Academy of Web Television Awards.

I was given the opportunity to take on the role of VFX coordinator for H+ and Mass Effect 3 which was a great experience. I started working with Switchback Entertainment because it was an opportunity to combine both my VFX and films skills. We are given a lot of creative control with the work we do and there is a lot of opportunity to try new things.

CREATIVE INSPIRATION FOR VFX WORK

3D World: From where do you draw your inspiration?
BR: I’m just a fan of any good VFX work and I can’t deny that I love big blockbuster VFX films.

3D World: What is the most enjoyable project you have worked on so far in your career and why?
BR: My favourite project so far has been The Burn, an episode of Salomon Freeski TV we produced this year. It was a huge opportunity to try something unique to the freeski film industry and it has had very positive feedback since being released.

3D World: Of which piece of work are you most proud?
BR: The two projects of which I am most proud are The Burn and H+ The Digital Series. They are the projects I’ve had the most responsibility on and have had a great response from viewers.

Watch Episode 1 of H+ The Digital Series here:

3D World: Which has been your most challenging piece of work?
BR: Some of the early projects I worked on were the most challenging. The film Invictus was especially difficult. It was the first project at Faction after I graduated from VanArts. We had to track digital make-up on to rugby players as they were playing. It required a lot of very difficult tracking using Mocha and Nuke and most of the time we had to manually track and warp a lot of the elements.

BEST 3D SOFTWARE

3D World: What is your favourite or most-used 3D software and why?
BR: The Foundry’s Nuke is my go-to software for compositing and any easy 3D work. It’s very robust and powerful no matter what you’re doing. For realistic 3D modelling and rendering Maya is best. But for 3D motion design and titling I like Cinema 4D.

3D World: Do you specialise in any new or notable techniques?
BR: Not really. Just pretty good at all the fundamentals I would say.

3D World: Could you please talk us through a key piece of work and say how you achieved it using 3D software?
BR: There were a couple of really long shots in H+ that required some heavy 3D tracks. I used Nuke to generate and refine the track and then used the track to remove tracking markers and composite different elements into the scene.

3D World: Which other studios’ and artists’ work do you most admire?
BR: I’m a very big fan of motion design and title work. The Sequence Group in Vancouver has done amazing work in motion comics and motion design and I always check their blog for any new work they release.

Watch Blair’s The Burn film here:

3D World: What’s your favourite CG animation and why?
BR: Wall-E is my favourite 3D animated movie – you forget that you’re even watching a CG film. I also love the cinematics made by Blizzard for their games. The animation and VFX is amazing and I wish they would make a film or series out of them.

3D World: What’s your favourite film and why?
BR: Requiem for a Dream and The Great Escape are my favourite films. They aren’t heavy on VFX but the filmmaking in Requiem is amazing and The Great Escape is just a classic.

3D World: What’s your favourite commercial work and why?
BR: A lot of the work done by Blur is really amazing. They combine good animation, filmmaking and motion design. I especially like the cinematics they do for games.

3D World: What advice can you give for aspiring 3D artists looking to break into the industry?
BR: The people who are really successful in this industry are the people with a passion for it. You won’t go far if you aren’t a fan of VFX.

3D World: Could you share a technical ‘secret’ on how you work?
BR: I find I work a lot better when I’m listening to podcasts or stand-up comedy. Listening to people talk keeps me alert while allowing me to focus on what I’m doing at the same time. (Not very technical but it helps me a lot!)

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

3D World: What’s next for you?
BR: We have a lot of really cool projects we’re working on with Salomon Freeski TV. The Burn has helped show that you can add VFX to action sports without taking away from the action so we have a lot planned for the next season.

3D World: What would you do if you could?
BR: I’m pretty close to my dream job right now at Switchback Entertainment. Being able to combine cinematography, editing and VFX in action sports is something I never thought possible.

Read 3D World’s review of Nuke 7.0 here.

Follow this full free tutorial on Nuke from 3D World magazine. Supporting files and video included.

Tales of Toyotas and their owners are brought to life in this series of shorts for the Paris Motor Show

For the 2012 Paris Motor Show, Toyota and ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi London wanted to create truly special visuals, so they drafted in the skills of London-based production company Blinkink and award-winning mixed media studio Hornet. The collaboration resulted in a series of films that tell stories of Toyotas and their owners.

Blinkink directors Yulian Sanchez Ojanen and Daniel A Söllscher (aka Major Briggs) and Gabe Askew worked on two separate films for the campaign. “We worked on ‘The 27 1/2 Year Journey’, for which all of the 3D aspects were done in 3ds Max,” says Ojanen. “We also used the Book Rigger script for the book animation, and the 3ds Max plugin MadCar for the car rigging and animation.”

The team also made full use of Adobe’s compositing software. “There were so many parts to this post that it all had to come together in the final composition stage,” says Söllscher.

“There were stop-motion elements of ink splashes that we carded in 3D space or just tracked in After Effects. With the flexibility of After Effects, we were able to experiment with many different takes, and progressively increment splashes as we figured out what looked the best.”

Want to see more cool CG commercials like this one? Check out iPhone – Diorama

The quality of this CG animation is so good, we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple actually used this as a bona fide advert in the future. Find out how 3D artist Michael Ko used Maya, After Effects, V-Ray, PFTrack and Photoshop to create this awesome short.

▲ Crush is an animation, design and post studio based in Toronto. The studio’s work has won awards in Canada and internationally, and has been featured in various design annuals

Find out about Emily’s Story – a project which gave Toronto-based studio Crush and its creative director Gary Thomas an opportunity to discover some hidden talents

Vital statistics

Studio: Crush
Format: Online PSA
Client: KBS+P Toronto for Church & Dwight Co
Time taken: Four weeks
Team size: Five full-time people, including a producer, creative director and three designers; two freelance illustrators and one freelance animator; plus engineering support, camera support and set hands
Software used: After Effects
Release date: 5 November 2012

• Watch The Magic of a Wish – Emily’s Story now!

How Emily’s Story began

Emily’s Story began with a phone call. Clare Cashman, a Toronto-based freelance producer who specialises in animation and motion graphics, rang Crush with a compelling project from ad agency KBS+P Toronto.

The brief was for Church & Dwight, manufacturer of the anti-nausea drug Gravol, on behalf of the Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada – a charity that provides trips to the families of children suffering life-threatening illnesses. The idea behind the film was to tell the story of a real child, and the joy that the Children’s Wish Foundation brought to her and her family’s life.

▲ Some scenes consistently resonate with viewers. The team still can’t watch this scene with dry eyes

Choosing a script to fulfill the brief

Clare had two scripts: one that combined straightforward narration with family photos, and another told in the style of a rhyming story book about a little girl with a brain tumour who visits Hawaii. We were instantly drawn to the latter idea; the story was compelling and we really wanted to do an animated spot in the style of an illustrated children’s book. After meeting with creative, we were hooked.

What went right during the production process

1. We got the right people for the job
We immediately began assembling the team. Crush is lucky to have Julia Deakin, a designer with an illustration background, on staff. The vibrancy and simplicity of her character design was the perfect fit for this project. Crush staffer Yoho Yue had previously created short animations using paper models, and had always wanted to use the technique for a larger project. Moreover, the paper doll look played to our design team’s strengths, and could be executed cheaply and within our tight turnaround production schedule of less than four weeks.
With two-and-a-half weeks to shoot, we began by combining original illustrations animated in After Effects with practical sets built using construction paper, Styrofoam and foam core. To avoid bottlenecks in the production pipeline, we spread the work between Julia (character design, key set design and compositing), Yoho (lead animator and compositing), and designer Jullian Ablaza (set construction and compositing).

▲ Ashley and Flavia worked long hours designing and building more than one hundred practical elements

We also reached out to friends and recruited two amazingly talented illustrators, Ashley Barron and Flavia Lopez, who helped build and shoot all the sets.

Ashley is a respected Toronto-based artist who works with paper cutouts. She designed all the incredible props and sets for the short, including the spectacular pineapple made out of construction paper. We also persuaded animation director Joel Tellier to come and help out as an animator.

2. We kept the client informed
The next step was to get the animatic right. We presented the agency with three character directions in the first briefing, along with five reference spots that mixed practical sets and animation. Luckily, creatives Cristina Simonetto and John Roberton were very
much in sync with our team’s vision, as were Julie Poirier and Bryan Ritchie on the client side, ensuring that the development phase stayed on course.

The storyboard and design development happened concurrently with the animatic phase. The design team extrapolated Julia’s style frames into all the scenes and animation elements. Yoho, meanwhile, created the animatic within three days, and with a few tweaks, we were building sets and designing assets by the end of week one.

We already had a great rhythm going. It made sense to take advantage of that and build a few easy scenes early to get everyone in the groove, and to get scenes in front of the client as soon as possible. People get excited the first time they see things move, and if the client has different expectations it’s better to find out before you get too far into production.

▲ Subtleties like the sound of the MRI were crucial to give the story weight. Eight people were required to move all set elements and control lighting for the season-changing sequence

3. We solved problems creatively
Jullian and his team had a great system for dividing labour and building assets, despite not having much experience in miniature shooting or stop-frame animation. Our small studio had two shooting stages: one with a camera mounted above glass for stop-frame elements, and one for larger sets. Our engineer Rudy Ledvinka devised a variety of LED light rigs to allow us to get into small spaces, but each had its challenges. Getting the necessary brightness was tricky, heat was an issue, and flagging them in small spaces was sometimes problematic. We also ran into a problem finding gels while shooting the seasonal transition late on a Friday night. A blue Tupperware lid was pressed into service.

The team built more than 150 separate practical elements, mostly using construction paper. The flowers in Hawaii, the flying origami birds and the water splash in the pool were animated stop-frame on our second set, and the rest of the elements were comprised of Styrofoam wire and foam core. The snow was shredded Styrofoam, and the words Emily jumps on were foam core mounted on wires.

The season change shot was tricky. Created using a variety of sliding flat and hanging elements, the scene required six people to operate the moving elements and adjust the lighting elements so that it could be done 90 per cent in-camera. The falling leaves, the birds and the snow were shot on the second set and added in After Effects, as was the scene in Emily’s hospital room, which was animated in After Effects and comped in.

• Read our review of After Effects now!

▲ Animation director Yoho Yue summons his inner schoolgirl to create character reference for Emily

What went wrong during the production process

1. We forgot to factor in titling
By the end of week two we had shot most of the easy scenes, but the animation and design phases were behind schedule. The days started getting longer. We had chosen a beautiful, handwritten font designed by Julia for all the supers, but the choice meant she needed to take time from designing and compositing to develop the title cards.

As such, we sacrificed practicality for the sake of beauty and lost our main designer in the middle of production for almost a week – totally our own fault. In our original schedule, we hadn’t allotted any time to the titling until the end of the project. The only real back-and-forth with client and agency came with the opening and closing credits.

2. We were too hands-off with the sound
The agency tapped Toronto-based music house Apollo Music to provide stock music for the project, but after providing a couple of samples their producers decided to compose an original piece.

In animation, sound is hugely important and there’s sometimes a tendency for directors to be too literal with sound effects. Details are everything. We gave notes for some subtle sound design touches, but unfortunately we were unable to attend the final mixing sessions so we couldn’t guide the direction. And as a director of animation, you need to make sure you’re there for every step of the process.

Lessons learnt

If we did it over, we would bring on one dedicated compositor to free up the designers and animators and act as a second set of eyes. As a production moves into the completion phase, it’s good to narrow each team member’s responsibilities. I was able to act as an outside set of eyes to ensure the story came across simply, but we could have benefited from more time to make sure each scene was everything we had envisioned.

▲ The foreground flowers were animated separately as stop-motion; the dunes were the Styrofoam hills from the opening, repainted as sand

Energising a creative team

Despite a few sleepless nights, the experience creatively energised the team. In fact, on the final delivery day, Jullian left early to enter the 48 Hour Film Festival, so there must have been a little left in the tank. Everyone involved in the project – including the agency, the clients, and Emily and her family – felt like we had done something special. Afterwards, it was very hard to go back to our regular work. The video launched on YouTube, spread across the Internet, and to our delight, interest in Emily’s Story vastly exceeded expectations.

About the author

Gary Thomas is the founder and creative director of Crush. Gary started as an animator right out of school in 1984, and then worked for various CG and design companies worldwide before returning to Toronto to start Crush in 1998.

• Hey, have you read our interview with the makers of A Liar’s Autobiography? It is an animated feature film from a book written by Python Graham Chapman before his death in the 1980s. Read it now! It focuses on the process of making a film in stereoscopic 3D.