Scent of a Robot is full of fun details like the subway commuters who are robots with their own robot iPods (left). All images © UVPHACTORY.

Pete Miser’s hip-hop single tells the story of a cubicle-dwelling everyman who discovers that he is a robot. The music video — a metaphor of the human condition in the programmed, conditioned world of the new millennium — is a clever and humorous visualization, crafted from a combination of live-action footage and 3D animation by the creative team at UVPhactory, the New York-based design and production company co-founded by Scott Sindorf and Damijan Saccio. Creative director Alexandre Moors, who directed the video and did most of the robot research admits, “It was an appealing subject to explore.”

The team was responsible for all aspects of the video, short of recording the music. They created the concept, designed and executed the animation, shot the live-action footage and completed both the offline and online edits. The project was very much a collaborative venture. According to Sindorf, “At the UVPhactory, the creative team wears many hats. This music video presented the opportunity for all of us to collaborate.”

Scent of a Robot allowed creative director and director Alexandre Moors (left) and company co-founders Damijan Saccio (center) and Scott Sindorf to fully collaborate.

The team tried to be true to the narrative within the song, but wanted to give it a little twist. Moors likened the main character to that of a rabbit in a laboratory infused with conditioned programming. The video is full of little details that reinforce this theme. One fun example is the revelation that all the commuters on the subway are robots complete with their own robot iPods. The creative vision of the video constantly highlights this tendency of the masses to all act and look alike.

UVPhactory has done a lot of work for the Sci Fi Channel, so they have a lot of experience building robots, but what’s special about this robot was that Moors did a lot of design development for it. They tried to create a unique character that is still robotic, but is imbued with hip-hop qualities and has a real personality. Moors explains his design concepts, “The robot is a mix of Pete Miser’s own appearance — the way he walks, his silhouette — with the Mickey Mouse of the ’30s, Steamboat Willie — the beginning of animation for most of us. On top of that I liked the oval head that gives an ant feel. I think that was working with the song. Since we all are working robots, I wanted the robot to look like a busy ant. Plus a couple of other influences like Mobius, the French graphic illustrator.”

The video was quite elaborate with around 50 shots spanning the 3:30 running time. To tackle the video, the work was broken down into scenes. The 3D aspects had about 30 scenes, but there was a lot of action, so these were broken down into smaller bits. The shots consisted of multiple layers. The team worked from concept sketches. In the computer they created the whole world — the environment, the robots, the action and the camera moves. Sindorf shares, “We started right away building a lower resolution version of everything so that we immediately had stuff to work with.”

Although Moors usually lays out every single shot in a storyboard when he does live action, for this project he didn’t use storyboards because he was excited to play with the camera in the 3D world. He didn’t want the limits of something drawn on paper. Instead the team made a shot list so that they knew the number of shots that they needed to produce. For each shot, Moors sat down with Jake Slutsky, the senior animator, and moved the camera around. In that way they were able to pick the most interesting shots. Shots that were not live action orientated, but could only exist in an animated 3D world. “When I started doing storyboards, they were very live action, 2D orientated because I’m used to working with a real camera. Here I can have my camera go from the staircase into a subway train car, go out the window and then make a 360 around because it’s all in the 3D world,” adds Moors.