Instagram and Facebook ad for Revlon’s new scented nail polishes. A weighty AE project with a shed load of particles created in Trapcode Particular.
Client: Revlon
Agency: Lowe Profero
Studio: Tundra*
Directors: Espen Haslene, Karine Faou
Animator: Andy Hay
Client: Pfizer
Agency: Annex
Studio: Tundra*
Directors: Espen Haslene, Karine Faou
Animator: Andy Hay
Client: De Lage Landen
Agency: Quarantine Productions
De Lage Landen provide “asset financing and leasing to equipment manufacturers” and to reward their employees they commissioned production of a video to accompany their employee award ceremony. This was a 3 minute long video, the majority of which I completed in two days (then spent the next three adhering to client requests). A simple brief that let me test a few things I’d wanted to work with, mainly Rowbytes Depth Cue (to create a depth map for Camera Lens Blur) and Atmosphere (which turns distant layers white and changes the opacity dependant on their position to the camera). It worked well but render times were an issue on my 2010 MBP. Upgrade time soon!
Client: First Choice
Agency: Rockabox
Programme graphics for an online TV series. I was tasked with creating 6 individual title sequences with 6 maps. The creative direction was ‘Minority Report’ but in First Choice colours and it needed to be friendly. The animations were completed in 3 days, and built so that I could drop in photos and change text with ease when the assets trickled through over the following weeks.
This project began in November 2012 and was supposed to be a turnaround of about a month, however the final project ended up finished and going live in August 2013! A project like this should not have taken so long but huge client changes forced restarts on graphics and D&E going out of business meant that completing the project was tricky. I started the project as Senior Hybrid Designer at D&E (and finished it as a freelancer) which saw me assume the role of lead designer too. Over the course of the project I worked leading a number of freelancers in order to complete the work, however it wasn’t until June that most of the work came together. After two reshoots, five major script overhauls (start again), two voiceovers, three music tracks and a storyboard that finalised at v26(!) we finally got the thing done.
Bring Run Once (v2) is due to go live in the UK only where it will have it’s own Microsite and some clever web trickery to make it into a working Bing Search Page.
Here it is folks, the full, uncut, uncensored, unadulterated labour of love (that had me working until the wee hours for countless months). Credits to Ida Andersson, Ben Ramasami, Gary Abrehart and Justin Weyers who also worked tirelessly on this section of the film. My credits: The Flight Sequence (in it’s entirety). Character modelling and rigging, camera animation, scene modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering. Compositing for the entire sequence (done in stereo).
My first project at D&E, I animated, rendered and composited various bits and pieces across four separate deliverables. I came to the project with about 60% of the work having been done and spent about two weeks helping the team finish off the rest of the work. Software used C4D, After Effects & Colour Finesse.
Title Sequence:
Over the space of a few weeks I worked with the guys at MV on the title sequence and cover artwork animations for the documentary film about the legendary Status Quo.
Throughout my career I have been using Adobe products to create the work that I do, just like hundreds of thousands of others worldwide. However in November 2010 I was taken on board by Made Visual studio, with the task of researching Stereoscopic animation predominantly in After Effects, and to produce a document and series of tutorials based around workflows in After Effects. Over three month I amassed a huge amount of information, had produced many tests and experiments, been on a Stereoscopic training course at Sony HQ, Basingstoke with the ultimate task of teaching and then being “stereoscopic technical advisor” to the 14 chosen animation companies working on A Liar’s Autobiography.
Having done most of my research in CS5, it was only nearer the end that AE CS5.5 was released… which included the “Create Stereo 3D” camera button! This was to be honest, a bit of a relief, as it meant that companies would not have to modify their workflow too much in order to produce successful stereo imagery (though I had found perfectly suitable ways of working without the need for CS5.5!) There was still a fair amount of learning and then teaching to be done in order to avoid things like keystoning or divergence, but we got there in the end.
During my research Made Visual got in touch with Adobe, who were interested in hearing more about the project. After a couple of meetings and seminars with them, they came on board as sponsors for the film. Not only were the companies involved leased Production Premium CS5.5 for their offices but we were also gifted an HP Z800 with a Quadro 400, 2x 15000rpm SAS drives, a Tesla (at one point), a 640GB Fusion IO setup and some ridiculous amount of RAM, for us to use as our main edit machine. Needless to say, it was a bit quick!
One of the most important things I developed for the project was a workflow in which we could be supplied with footage by the companies and be able to view it in stereo, or left/right at the click of a button. Ultimately this came down to using After Effects and Premiere, using Dynamic Linking, to update the Premiere timeline. We used a number of scripts on the project and a number of free rigs and tools to complete the animation which I have referenced at the end of this post.
As it stands as I write this, the film has been complete for nearly 6 months, it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and is due for airing at the Tokyo Film Festival and in Rio. It is also getting special screenings at London Film Week hosted at the BFI in October, in which the general public can finally go and watch! Justin from Made Visual has been busy helping promote the film through Adobe TV and at IBC in Amsterdam. Both Justin and I are hosting a webinar via Adobe on Thursday 27th September, where we will speak in depth about the work we undertook and respond to questions and mockery from internet-goers.
For more information on the making of A Liars Autobiography, including video tutorials by myself please visit:
www.projectchapman3d.com
To watch me talking in a monotone about technical fun follow this link:
Coming soon!
And here are links to the scripts and bits that we couldn’t have produced the film without:
Chris Kellers amazing AE stereo scripts: http://pinkau.com/download/aestereoscripts.zip
Stefan Voigts excellent C4D camera rig: http://www.svoigt.net
The long awaited trailer is ready for public viewing! The film has premiered at Toronto Film festival and has entries at Tokyo and Rio to come. It is also screening at the London Film Festival at the BFI. As of yet the UK release date is not set, however it is due in US Cinemas and for streaming on Epix in November.
I had the pleasure of working with the crazy guys at Tundra for about two weeks on this music video for Dr P. I was the compositor for the majority of the video whilst also undertaking a large amount of the AE animation work (cameras, characters, laser beams!). The ideas, characters, scenes and styles were constantly changing as we worked towards the finished piece, but it was nice to work on something from storyboard edit to final outcome again.
I was called in by Dixon Baxi at the end of the project in order to provide the enormous number of deliverables needed for a TV rebrand. These include 16×9 versions, 4×3 versions, 14×9 safes, 4×3 safes, on stings, menus, promos… the list goes on! I spent the best part of two weeks in After Effects rendering everything as per Red Bee’s guidelines. In total, I believe there were about 50 different deliverables on the list, many of which also needed written guidelines (for logo exclusion zones, type colour, point size, kerning etc) for Red Bee to use on their systems. Some of the deliverables also meant that I had to tweak certain animations or layouts as they didn’t adhere to broadcast standards.
Read more about the rebrand on their website: http://dixonbaxi.com/uktv-yesterday-rebrand-2/
For the past year and six months I have been working on the feature film “Graham Chapman: A Liars Autobiography”. The image above is from our animated section of the film which is heavily inspired by graphic novels. We completed our section “Biggles” predominantly using C4D and AE, which saw me modelling, rigging, UV-ing, lighting, animating, rendering, compositing, grading and generally doing a massive amount of work on a steep learning curve. Before the project I had only used C4D a smattering of times on small projects so this was a real challenge, and to top it off it’s all in Stereoscopic 3D! Make sure you go and watch the film!
Second in the series for Carbon War Room, similar duties (AE and C4D).
AE and C4D duties working along side a couple of other animators.
I didn’t have massive involvement with most of the video however I did make the 3D synth and exploding 2001 Space Odyssey-esqu pillar (both in Cinema 4D). Animation completed at MV Studio with Oscar Granse and illustration by the legendary Pete Fowler.
Seasons Greetings animation for BPP 2011.
Red/blue anaglyph glasses required.
For 3 months I worked as a contractor for EA/Criterion in Guildford, UK. This reel is a collection of some of the work that I completed there, which includes in-game animation (unlock sequences), UI design, pre visuals (menus, map, car select etc) and marketing material. Planar tracking completed with Mocha and Point/Camera tracking with PFHoe.