A52 detailed its visual effects work for a new broadcast spot from Partizan director Olivier "Twist" Gondry, ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles and Toyota Motor Sales, USA Inc. The:30 spot titled THROW IT IN THE TUNDRA debuted recently in the heartland of the U.S., and will air in other regions in the weeks ahead.
The spot presents a single shot of a Toyota Tundra parked outdoors, as two men load its bed with bails of hay, tools and other supplies. The men begin their work in short sleeves on a sunny day, but the day quickly becomes rainy, and their attire instantly changes to rain gear. While the men continue working, their clothes change rapidly through the full range of seasons.
"This spot is deceptive," explained Kevin Murphy, Saatchi & Saatchi's project creative director and art director. "It looks simple, but was actually quite complex and the magic is always making complexity look effortless. A52 and Twist worked, both on location and in post, to create the various intense weather conditions that show the Tundra's durability season after season. And they did a great job. Attention to detail is what sets a spot like this apart and A52 and Twist nailed it."
Gondry has established himself since 1995 as a widely respected CG and vfx artist, after many years of working with his brother, acclaimed director Michel Gondry, on numerous internationally celebrated music video projects. Among Twist's own directorial feats from recent years are music videos for The Stills (LOLA STARS AND STRIPES), The Vines (RIDE and WINNING DAYS) and Hot Hot Heat (GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT), as well as commercials for Infiniti, Hyundai, Sprint and many others.
"Working with Twist is a unique experience, because of his in-depth understanding of visual effects," explained Pat Murphy, who served as A52's on-set vfx supervisor. "Because the spot is essentially one motion-control move repeated multiple times, the choreography of the actors' moves was the first challenge to creating the desired effect."
According to Murphy, Gondry actually handled the "morph" transitions for the actors himself, using Elastic Reality. Those morph sequences were then provided to A52's vfx supervisor Tim Bird, who worked with Flame artists Alicia Aguilera, Justin Blaustein, Mike Bliss, Eric Bruno, Ben Looram and Ryan Yoshimoto to seamlessly blend those elements into the master camera move.
Among the other contributions of A52's vfx team were handling sky replacements, adding 2D rain and 2D and 3D snow to appropriate segments. The team also incorporated a digital matte painting created in Photoshop by artist Helen Maier into all master scene's winter segments.
A52's exec producer is Mark Tobin (who is also A52s managing director), and Scott Boyajan and Dan Brimer co-produced the project for A52.
In other news, A 52 recently switched to Maya as its main tool for creating CGI work after years of using Side Effects Softwares Houdini.
The changes, which have led to this development, began last April, when Tobin announced the hiring of former Digital Domain feature film animation supervisor Andrew Hall as his new CG supervisor. My background has always been in Maya, Hall said. When I began here, the goal was to fuel more character-performance based work like what Id done in the past. Maya is the industry standard for those types of jobs. Also, Maya works very well as a shared-resource for allowing numerous people to work on the same shot or project in a very clean, concise way.
The character and modeling tools and the ways in which fluid dynamics are incorporated into Maya and with mental ray being incorporated better all the time Maya is very much a stand-alone package that is self supporting, Hall continued. Especially when youre doing commercials, because it's a fast product to use, and you can turn work around very quickly with phenomenal results.
Taking Halls lead, last year, for the first time in its history, A52s CGI team began creating work on PCs running Windows XP and Maya 7, and using mental ray for rendering. Other benefits of the companys new workflow incorporating Maya include the fact that the companys 2D artists, who work on Discreet Flame and Inferno systems from Autodesk, have ready access to camera tracking data corresponding to CG elements created in Maya.
Established in 1997 as a home for the very latest high-end photoreal visual effects technologies and some of the industry's most innovative and talented graphic design artists, West Hollywood visual effects and design company A52 (www.A52.com) creates award-winning imagery for its ambitious commercial and TV projects. The company's work has been earned AICP Show recognition for six consecutive years along with recent "Outstanding Commercial" Emmy, Andy, BDA, Belding, Clio, British Design and Art Direction, International Monitor, International Automotive Advertising, London International Advertising, One Show and PROMAX awards.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
