- Mighty Giant: App Trails -
Brief
I worked with Mighty Giant to create an advert for some of Cbeebies' apps. We were tasked to create a kit of parts, which would provide them the ability to swap out content at will. This resulted in 4 kits: one for each advertised app.
Approach
Most of the shots were similar across each kit of parts (apart from colour changes and texture swaps), so I aimed to recycle the majority of the scenes in order to minimise time-waste. I began with the light rays (to establish the visual aesthetic), then moved onto building the foundations of the other scenes, and developed from there.
Developing the Concept
I was provided with concept visuals to develop, based on 'light rays'. I worked closely with the director at Mighty Giant to establish the visuals for the concept - I worked on the 3D, and the director worked on compositing.
Once the concept visuals were approved, I moved onto creating and animating the rest of the scenes.
Animating the Light Rays
I started with animating the light rays, as the scene was already built. I could've done this after building the foundations of the other scenes, but the situation called for this to be done first out of reassurance.
This required 4 separate scenes, due to the light ray animations differing between each of the kits. There's not much to be said about the animation, other than "it was trickier than anticipated". Some parts from the original concept had to be recreated in a different way to accommodate for the animation (e.g. using a 'Loft' generator instead of a 'Sweep'), and some parts would swap-out via visibility animations.
Once the light rays animations for each kit had been finished, I moved onto building the rest of the scenes.
Building the Foundations
This was simply a case of building what was storyboarded, without the characters. The other scenes consisted of camera moves and animated devices - except the intro, which had an animated button.
The Characters
The 'Bug' characters are a part of the Cbeebies brand, so I had to make sure that they were modelled and shaded in a way that fit the branding.
I made use of 'Fresnel' for the black outline, to ensure that the outline would be retained regardless of camera angle.
For the rig, I opted for a series of deformers. The most prominent deformer was the 'Mesh' deformer, which was controlled by 2 spheres - one controlled the head, the other controlled the body. The rest of the deformers helped with extra movement, wobbliness and smoothing.
Once I'd modelled, shaded and rigged a bug, it was simply a case of duplicating it across the scenes and animating them all.
Rendering
After a bit of polishing across all of the scenes, they were set off to render (via Redshift). The renders were then passed to the director to composite.
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