About
“Smooth Sailing” is a 30 second TV commercial. It is the third installment in a series of mixed-media spots we created for our client, SWBC, again featuring our animated Hero. This latest adventure takes place on the High Seas, where the deep blue ocean waters change from calm to stormy in a heartbeat.
Credits
Director: Tony Gallardo
Photography Director: Marks Moore
Concept: Dirk Mitchell
Technical Info
Each element in the spot was animated, with the exception of the boat and the hand, which we captured via stop motion. Throughout the entire piece, it was extremely important to convey the ranging and emotional state of the water. Using a custom in-camera approach, we shot a moving piece of paper, tracked it, and used that motion for our waves. We found the technique to be fast, simple and much better than hand keyframing each frame. And it worked perfectly!
Our next big hurdle was building the environment. To do things dynamically with camera movements, depth of field changes and a real sense of space, we built our environment inside after effects in 3D. Continuing the hand cranked feel of the spot, our sea monster was created in the open source 3D program Blender. After tons and tons of keyframing and hand animating, as well as pizza and beer, everything came together nicely and off to sea we went.
Two must have plug-ins were Magic Bullet’s Particular and Magic Bullet Looks. Particular was used for rain effects and some water splash effects. Looks was utilized to give a nice final color grade, and help set the mood of each emotional scene. We could not have finished without them.
Tools Used:
Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro
Canon 5D MII camera
Red Giant plug-ins: Trapcode, Particular, Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista
Video Copilot's Optical Flares
Blender 3D software
04/27/2011
00:32
