10.04.2011
Mane Attraction
TJ was approached with this unique project by the award-winning ad agency GSW Worldwide to produce a print and motion campaign promoting the use of the cancer-fighting drug Alimta. The campaign initially featured the beautiful adaptation of an Eagle; but recently the project took on two more animated concepts aptly titled, Horse and Jet. Our role was to create 3D animations completely in CGI which included the Alimta golden triangle logo that would then form into the various elements, figurative of their three key themes: progressive, powerful and iconic- the latter, represented by the first animation, the American eagle.
The stunning moving images were created by using a control mask across the models and then having a procedural animation script that would then follow the direction allowing us to control our procedural animation. When working on a project which has animation and print, it’s key to produce consistent results and part of this is making sure we use the same procedures on each one, we use scripts written to automate certain tasks and produce consistent results. These can be used on animation and print jobs and are written for each project by our R & D Department.
Having been commissioned to work on the eagle first, when it came time to bring together Horse and Jet, TJ already had a pipeline in place to produce extra images and animations in the same style. The Horse animation required some further research and development to create a script that could unfold the triangles on the moving and de-forming horse, which gave our R&D department a few headaches! Having the original animation script as a base allowed us to just further develop the script to work on a de-forming mesh; we managed to solve the problems and produce the same high quality results keeping the quality of the work consistent throughout.
Housing all production and post-production disciplines under one roof, we were able to build one asset and animate it whilst positioning it for print. Traditionally, you would have an animated production company doing one part of the campaign and a print studio doing another, most of the time they don’t look the same and can lack unity across the separate medias, whilst costing the clients and agencies a lot more money as assets aren’t being shared between print and motion.
The animation was an extra challenge on the eagle; with over 10,000 triangles it would be impossible to animate them all unfolding by hand. There is no built in button or tool in our software to do this, so our R&D department tackled this by creating a bespoke scripted plug-in, which allowed for the triangle panels to unfold from one another. The use of animated gradients mapped onto the eagle meant we could control how and where the model was built and to the correct timing. This process required both the scripting and animation department to work together to create a controllable and flexible solution which could then be tweaked if necessary.
In the later stages of production, we applied hi-res materials and studio lighting giving the eagle those extra touches making it stand-out more. Our rendering method ensured the compositor had enough information and data to bring out the finer details, whilst also putting the finishing touches on the animation.
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