The Brief:
The VFX team at Smoke & Mirrors New York creates an otherworldly environment for O2, a leading European mobile phone provider. The icy wonderland is populated by friendly CG robots and flying ice fairies; magic and technology combine to create O2 packages and presents for Christmas. The endearing inhabitants exist in an animated world of floating crystals and frozen clouds as they provide us with a glimpse of services and products for the holidays.
From SMNY:
Smoke & Mirrors New York's 3D department was able to work closely with director Mato Atom to bring life to his vision of clearly realized character and environmental designs, utilizing his preliminary reference boards. Lead CG animator, Serkan Ertekin developed storyboards before building detailed animatics to help facilitate the look and feel of the spot. A high level of detail and clarity in these animatics enabled the client approval process to run very smoothly, thus allowing us more time to focus on the smaller character details and idiosyncrasies of the spot. The various robots and fairies all have their own distinct character and personality which had to be communicated purely through their physicality. Once Serkan breathed life into these characters he oversaw other animators who assisted in creating the background character animations. Serkan was then able to focus on the detailed foreground performances. Lead CG artist Steve Parish and the Smoke & Mirrors 3D team turned their skills on building, texturing, and rigging the CG environments and characters. Each ice cloud and landform was crafted with multiple layers of texture to create the dynamic crystalline surfaces we see in the environment.
We were only able to work and render effectively using our 64bit pipeline; the 32bit approach simply couldn't handle the amount of data. Besides the main body of the spot, there were 6 variations of the end tag, each running at approximately :12, and each with their own individual character animations. Three of the tags also incorporated live action phone products which were shot motion control and comped onto a floating ice cloud with CG characters interacting with them.
Smoke & Mirrors flame team then used the multiple texture passes supplied by CG to enhance the many different structures in the environments; from the characters themselves to the crystal landforms and clouds. The key O2 branding element, bubbles were all generated in Flame and are present in almost every scene.
The Creds:
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Client: O2 Spot Title: Loop Air Date: January 08 Agency: Grey Worldwide GmbH Creative Director: Stefan Rehne Agency Producer: Christoph Koehler Director/ Designer: Mato Atom |
Production: Big Fish / Paranoïd US Executive Producers: Andrea Roman, Claude Letessier, Phillip Detchmendy Head of Production: Cathleen O'Conor Producer: Guillaume Raffi 3D Animation and Visual Effects: Smoke & Mirrors NY Lead Animator: Serkan Ertekin Lead CGI: Steve Parish, Arlene Persaud Lead Flame Compositor: Nick Tanner Smoke and Mirrors CD: Sean Broughton Post Producer: Paul O'Beirne |
About Smoke & Mirrors:
Founded by Creative Director Sean Broughton, CEO Penny Verbe and CTO Mark Wildig lead the New York and London-based design, animation and VFX studio Smoke & Mirrors. It has been synonymous with creativity, originality, and innovation since its inception.
Smoke & Mirrors has always succeeded because of its collaborative approach, building strong creative relationships with directors, producers, agencies and clients alike.
Each office fully is networked together with complementary systems allowing the facilities to share resources, expanding local capacity. Close involvement with manufacturers and developers has kept Smoke & Mirrors at the forefront of technology and on all levels.
Smoke & Mirrors diverse range of projects include: feature films from ranging from Harry Potter to James Bond, award winning commercials, music videos and television.
