Is Atomic poised to make South Africa the new Down Under? All images courtesy of Atomic Visual Effects.

Atomic Visual Effects in Cape Town, South Africa, blazed a path to innovation in commercials, music videos, advertisements and shorts by seamlessly integrating live-action with photorealistic animation, having won an unprecedented 15 Avanti Awards and gold-level kudos at the Stone Awards, both part of the National Television and Video Assn. of South Africa.

But Atomic has blasted far beyond its borders, which company executives have described as both confining and yet fertile ground for opportunity. Roughly 80% of clients last year hailed from abroad, while in 2004 the company finally plans to enter contests and festivals around the globe on the heels of dazzling commercials for popular beverage brands from Coke to Guinness, as well as several local products. The firm also recently completed work on a music video of a DJ duo called Jago for Universal Music in Miami, which earned high honors at the recent Stone Awards.

Atomic’s distinctive blend of CG and live action can be seen in this ad campaign for Powerhouse, an Austrian energy drink.

Tricks and Tweaks
Ad Hurricane, an Austrian advertising agency, sought out Atomic for a Powerhorse Energy Drink commercial before even setting foot on South African soil — a decision based on viewing the company’s Space Oddity clip, which, along with Atomic’s Hellweek short, were shown at the Res Fest competition.

The goal was to achieve the signature CG-live-action blend for which Atomic has left an indelible print. But Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating on Day No. 1 of the shoot, drenching a critical horseracing scene. Rescheduling during the tightly budgeted three-week project was out of the question. So a number of clever tricks and tweaks of the trade were employed during post-production to mask the rain-soaked track.

Other challenges included compositing live action into fully virtual sets, while vehicles and 3D cities were created to lend substance to a CG chopper featured in certain shots. Among the technologies used to bring to life the commercial’s vision: Discreet’s combustion 2.1 for greenscreen compositing and Newtek’s LightWave 7.5 to help animators generate CG content from scratch.

“Our Powerhorse client developed a brief with us that included several different locations, which they had initially planned on doing in camera,” explains Ali Maleka, animation director and a co-founder of the firm who started out as lead animator. “But we were able to present them with some nice photo-realistic CG alternatives. They ended up getting a very stylish result, which they were extremely happy with. In fact, they were so happy with it that they allowed us to do a completely CG pack shot as well, which is quite unusual.”