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| (above) still image from Commercial #1 - "elephant tower" |
total time = 2 weeks
client: KaChew! and Nabisco
Commercial #1 --"Elephant tower"
overview: there were 2 scenes i had create-- first was the exterior establishing view of the Tree house, which called for a slow camera zoom, while the sun set in the far distance.. and the flowers needed to animate (closing) during this timelapse sunset. the second scene was an interior shot, of a tower of furniture, that had an elephant standing at the top of this! The elves would then pull the rope, which would cause the elephant to fall down on the peanut butter below, squirting it on to the cookie! i would be responsible for all 3D elements (everything but the 2D hand drawn elves)
Exterior scene
because of the 'style' of the Keebler commercials, i had to create a very stylistic landscape (round background trees, rolling hillsides, stylized flowers, colorful, etc)
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| (above) - concept art for the landscape |
Layers and render passes are your friend
the environment was broken into layers: background (mtns), midground (distant trees/rolling hills), and foreground (Keebler tree, flowers, dirt path and grass) -- each layer was rendered separately (for control and revisions) and then composited together in After Effects
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| (above) - background mountains |
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| (above) - midground layer and elements |
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| (above) - foreground layer and elements |
Props/objects
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| (above) simple geometry was created for the daises |
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| (above) - English Primroses were created and later animated to close |
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| (above) - concept art for the Keebler tree |
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| (above) - model of the tree made from primitives and sculpted |
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| (above) - 3D tree leaves |
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| (above) - the ground was created from a plane and sculpted in Maya |
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| (above) - Maya's Paint Effects was used to create the grass |
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| (above) - Maya's Paint Effects was used to create the grass; this is how it looks from the camera |
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| (above) - close up of tree/ground |
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| (above) - grass test renders in day/dusk lighting; click image to see larger version |
Lighting/animated sunset
The script called for a quick/timelapse sunset complete with animated foreground flowers that closed during the sunset.
I had to solve how to animate the background sky color, clouds that slowly faded in and changed lighting, shadows and light color that changed over the time and how to animate each flower -- all of this was done using Maya and After Effects
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| (above) - concept art showing start of sky (midday) |
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| (above) - concept art showing end of sky (sunset) |
As the sky becomes dusk-- i had to also fade in stars at the top of the sky; below is the star field i created
The first version of clouds that i created were too realistic for the director, so i then created
these more stylized clouds (below); in After Effects, i animated them fading in and moving across the sky. i also cross-dissolved between multiple versions of the bitmap to create a change in the lighting on the form of the clouds(to be more under-lit as the sun set below them)
The movie below was a test to see how the sky color and sun would animate over time (at this point, the clouds just fade in -- later tests would focus on them moving and changing form with lighting/scale)
Interior scene
Scene 2 involved me creating a bunch of assets that needed to be 'stacked' on top of each other (the cliche-- 'everything but the kitchen sink'-- but in this case, the sink is part of it!) -- i had 1 week to model/texture all of these props and position them accordingly
(below) concept art -- click to see larger version
Props/objects
The objects were modeled in Maya and textured using Photoshop and Bodypaint 3D; after the objects were built and placed in the tower, they then had to be rigged to allow for animation/movement-- as the tower
'swayed' due to the elephants weight on top!
(click any of the images below to see a larger image)
Final 30 second tv commercial
..and here it is! (thanks for your time) - Chad
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