Unexpected Uses Krakatoa on VFX-Intensive Ad Campaign For Snickers
Frantic Films Software, the software development arm of vfx studio Frantic Films (a division of Prime Focus Group), announced that its high-volume point-based particle renderer Krakatoa was used by German post facility Unexpected on a recent commercial campaign for Snickers Russia.
The two-spot effort via ad agency BBDO Moscow and Spy Films, Toronto, combines feature film-quality VFX with live-action to tell a story of biomechanical creatures that use Snickers as their energy supply. The first spot RUGBY, is currently airing throughout Russia, while a second spot, TAG, breaks in fall 2008.
Founded in 1999 and currently boasting a 35-member team of directors, vfx artists and animators, Stuttgart, Germany-based post-production studio Unexpected is behind some of the most vfx-intensive commercial, TV and film projects in Europe.
Unexpected's vfx team is led by Managing Director and Co-Founder Alexander Kiesl and Head of Visual Effects Steffen Hacker. Krakatoa was added to the company's Autodesk 3ds Max production pipeline in October 2007.
Krakatoa is Frantic Film Software's production-proven volumetric point renderer ideal for creating believable and finely detailed natural phenomena, like dust, smoke, silt, ocean surface foam, plasma and even solid objects. The latest Snickers campaign was the studio's first project using Krakatoa, which was employed to help boost several key CG shots.
Steffen Hacker, Head of Visual Effects at Unexpected said, "Our studio's primary tools are Autodesk 3ds Max, Pixologic Zbrush, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe After Effects CS3 running primarily on Dell Dimensions with Windows XP x64 running on 64bit CPUs. Krakatoa integrated effortlessly with our pipeline and renderfarm, and it proved to be a powerful addition to our VFX arsenal on this recent job."
In addition to heading up Unexpected's VFX department, Kiesl and Hacker are also award-winning commercial directors.
Working under the moniker Alex & Steffen, the duo has been helming commercials for the likes of Microsoft Xbox, World Wildlife Fund, and the Finnish Ministry of Transport since 2005. Alex & Steffen are repped by Spy Films in Toronto, but bring all projects into Unexpected for visual effects and post.
This is the second Snicker campaign from Unexpected and Alex & Steffen. Their first was in 2006, with the spots ROBOTS and RACE. That campaign was such a success; BBDO Moscow approached the company again to raise the bar even higher for the 2007-2008 effort.
In the Snickers RUGBY spot, hybrid robot-human creatures play rugby on an abandoned military plane bone yard. In the ad's climax, one of the creatures loses all its energy and disassembles into a huge cloud of dust and debris.
"We didn't want to go for a seen-before morph and didn't want to use the mechanical explosion disassemble we used to animate the first two Snickers spots, so a more natural, organic transformation was needed," explains Hacker. "We experimented a lot with other plug-ins for 3ds Max, but none of them achieved the look we were going for. Then we discovered Frantic Films Software's Krakatoa."
The transformation and re-transformation shots in RUGBY were to include a huge amount of particles. Unexpected had originally planned to do all the particle animation using 3ds Max's particle system Particle Flow. However, the team discovered that its renderer-of-choice couldn't churn out the number of particles it wanted to integrate into the transformation shots. So after researching all the particle simulators available, Alex & Steffen decided to give Krakatoa a shot.
The two-spot effort via ad agency BBDO Moscow and Spy Films, Toronto, combines feature film-quality VFX with live-action to tell a story of biomechanical creatures that use Snickers as their energy supply. The first spot RUGBY, is currently airing throughout Russia, while a second spot, TAG, breaks in fall 2008.
Founded in 1999 and currently boasting a 35-member team of directors, vfx artists and animators, Stuttgart, Germany-based post-production studio Unexpected is behind some of the most vfx-intensive commercial, TV and film projects in Europe.
Unexpected's vfx team is led by Managing Director and Co-Founder Alexander Kiesl and Head of Visual Effects Steffen Hacker. Krakatoa was added to the company's Autodesk 3ds Max production pipeline in October 2007.
Krakatoa is Frantic Film Software's production-proven volumetric point renderer ideal for creating believable and finely detailed natural phenomena, like dust, smoke, silt, ocean surface foam, plasma and even solid objects. The latest Snickers campaign was the studio's first project using Krakatoa, which was employed to help boost several key CG shots.
Steffen Hacker, Head of Visual Effects at Unexpected said, "Our studio's primary tools are Autodesk 3ds Max, Pixologic Zbrush, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe After Effects CS3 running primarily on Dell Dimensions with Windows XP x64 running on 64bit CPUs. Krakatoa integrated effortlessly with our pipeline and renderfarm, and it proved to be a powerful addition to our VFX arsenal on this recent job."
In addition to heading up Unexpected's VFX department, Kiesl and Hacker are also award-winning commercial directors.
Working under the moniker Alex & Steffen, the duo has been helming commercials for the likes of Microsoft Xbox, World Wildlife Fund, and the Finnish Ministry of Transport since 2005. Alex & Steffen are repped by Spy Films in Toronto, but bring all projects into Unexpected for visual effects and post.
This is the second Snicker campaign from Unexpected and Alex & Steffen. Their first was in 2006, with the spots ROBOTS and RACE. That campaign was such a success; BBDO Moscow approached the company again to raise the bar even higher for the 2007-2008 effort.
In the Snickers RUGBY spot, hybrid robot-human creatures play rugby on an abandoned military plane bone yard. In the ad's climax, one of the creatures loses all its energy and disassembles into a huge cloud of dust and debris.
"We didn't want to go for a seen-before morph and didn't want to use the mechanical explosion disassemble we used to animate the first two Snickers spots, so a more natural, organic transformation was needed," explains Hacker. "We experimented a lot with other plug-ins for 3ds Max, but none of them achieved the look we were going for. Then we discovered Frantic Films Software's Krakatoa."
The transformation and re-transformation shots in RUGBY were to include a huge amount of particles. Unexpected had originally planned to do all the particle animation using 3ds Max's particle system Particle Flow. However, the team discovered that its renderer-of-choice couldn't churn out the number of particles it wanted to integrate into the transformation shots. So after researching all the particle simulators available, Alex & Steffen decided to give Krakatoa a shot.
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