Elastic
"This campaign has been very collaborative between us and RPA, and I have been fortunate to develop a great relationship with the agency. They gave our design team a lot of freedom to develop ideas and were very trusting that the look and approach we developed would be something that the client and consumer would embrace." -- Andy Hall, director

Techniques
The main creative challenge was centered around our approach of taking very detailed characters and stripping them down to just their form, while not losing any emotion, warmth or mood that was captured in our initial boards.  Saul Bass's methodology of believing that there's no substitute for great design, and that you really only need to provide what's necessary to communicate story points, really helped inspire Elastic when it was pitching their first concepts. This approach embodied that way of thinking in terms of attitude, stylization of the characters and the sense of mood. In the end it was able communicate the idea through the use of polygonal information that enabled us share details with the viewer only when necessary. Key project tools were Maya and Nuke.

Credits for Honda Accord Crosstour Instruments
Production Company: Elastic
Director: Andy Hall
DP: Toby Irwin
Live Action Producer: David Wolfson
Executive Producer: Jennifer Sofio Hall
Designers: An Nguyen, Henry de Leon, Eunice Kim, Max Ulichney
Ad Agency: RPA
Chief Creative Officer: David Smith
Creative Director: Pat Mendelson
Writer: Seth Prandini
Art Director: Chuck Blackwell
Executive Producer: Gary Paticoff
VFX/Finishing Company: a52
CG Lead: Max Ulichney
3D Artists: Paulo de Almada, Ian Ruhfass, Christina Lee, Rick Glenn, Kevin Culhane, Joe Chiechi
Lead Compositor: Shahana Khan
Rotoscoping: David Hochstadter
Colorist: Angus Wall
Assistant Producer: Heather Johann
Producer: Sarah Haynes
Executive Producer: Jennifer Sofio Hall
Music: HUM
Arrangement by: Alex Kemp & Robert Lopez
Executive Creative Director: Jeff Koz
Creative Director: Alex Kemp
Executive Producer: Debbi Landon
Creative Director, Licensing: Tricia Halloran

 

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Framestore
"We felt that the more bits where the actor is touching and connected with real objects, the better," says Bartlett, "So the dartboard, the spokes and rim of the bike wheel, the neck of the guitar and its 'strings' -- all those were real giant models. Also shot for real were the various real world environments -- the fast food counter, the school, the parental home, the business floor. In each of those we also shot two passes, so we could create the effect of two different gravitational fields at work - one for the rooms and their inhabitants and another for the external 'reality', ie the steep surface our hero is climbing." -- William Bartlett, visual effects supervisor

Techniques
The complexity of the job -- the enormous number of assets and the dual use of Maya and Houdini -- meant that the team developed something more akin to a movie pipeline than something entailed by the average commercial. This enabled the lighting TDs to build scenes quickly and to devote their attention to making the shots look good, rather than the repetitive work of placing models and assigning shaders.

Credits for Pepsi Rising
VFX & Telecine: Framestore
VFX Supervisor: William Bartlett
3D Supervisor: Simon French
Producer: Michael Stanish
Ad Agency: BBDO
Agency Creatives: David Bertram, Leo Berne
Creative Directors: Jean-Francois Sacco, Gilles Fichteberg
Agency Producer: France Monnet
Production Company: Rattling Stick
Director: Danny Kleinman
Producer: Johnnie Frankel