Our close friends at Verdant Vision were working with them them anyway, and when they wanted to have an animation produced to show in an exciting manner a selection of the areas their tools are used in, they came to us.

The project was pretty large, with a lot of 3D modelling and handling of very detailed CAD models. With a team of up to 10 people at its peak covering various roles from 3D to audio post, we got the aniamtion delivered in time for the large engineering show in Hamburg.

Apparently it even got a bit of a standing ovation for them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCL8oJkw3LQ

Golley Slater teamed up with their trusted production house, the lovely chaps at Sound and Picture House, who were excited to be working on this project.  After some refining, the guys at SPH gave us a call to give them a bit of assistance with the 3D text to be featured.

This was not a simple task to create, as the commercial was shot in a white studio, with very little in the way of markers (or marks) to for us to track.  Nevertheless, we managed to pull tracking info from the scenes so we could synchronise our virtual cameras with the motions of the real camera from the shoot -- this meaning the positions and angles of the text matched the real thing!

Once done, we handed our shiny renders of 3D text back to SPH to piece it together with the footage.

Although done in the first half of 2010, the advert came on air nationally on ITV1 on Boxing Day -- much to our joy…!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhtkUYTzKzA

The Stratstone.com address needed to be supplied, rendered at a specific angle and rendered out so large it would fit a bill board in the street! (This is actually harder than it sounds…)

We got it delivered to them electronically, so they could then monkey around with other elements and images to put together with the text.

We like a bit of teamwork…!

So they’re in there!  A pretty funked up sequence with an electronic tablet display, and another with a robotic floating security camera in a scene with many electronic lights.

Blink and you’ll miss them!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFJqcFpygY

“Music video for Rock My Hologram from Jerusalaam Come, one of iTunes hip hop albums of the year, a Record of the Week in The Independent.

A Mythological journey through time & space.

Directed & Produced by Ben Lister

Art director -- David Curtis-Ring
Set designer and costume maker -- David Curtis-Ring
Set design assistant -- Aaron Tilley

Assistant producer -- Jon Randle

Director of Photography -- Andrew Johnson

Editor and effects -- Ben Lister
2D designer and stop motion animator -- David Curtis-Ring
3D -- Paul Berner

Camera assistant -- Chris Rhodes
Gaffer -- Stuart Colburn
Production Assistant -- Joel Wilson
Art department assistant-Katerina Pushkin
Runners -- Syliva Chan & Kisha Agnew

Stills photographer -- Andy Borg
Studio -- David Moore Boxxed

Big Thanks to TAK!, Prime Objective, Joel & Apple”

Led by M3′s art director, the project was planned and shot. During the planning stages, our team were involved in checking over 3D requirements for the armour plating for the rhinos – the park’s newest attractions.

While the commercial was being edited, we were busy creating and animation the armour, tweaking the materials to give the metal the right look. We then provided the final images that were produced back to Sound and Picture House, ready for them to drop into to place over the live action sequences of the rhinos.

This all worked out to be a smooth process, and the project finished up looking rather nice and shiny.

The commercial has been on air on ITV1 since Good Friday, and so far as we know, has been getting a great response.

We look forward to working with Sound and Picture House again soon!

They’d won a job to create a video for the Heritage Lottery Fund.  They needed some Titles creating for the introduction of the piece.  Who were they gonna call? … Team Brace!

Actually we had a lot of fun with this one.  It was great to have a brief where we could get a bit more interesting with the look of the titles.  We met Warblefly’s brief really well, and the folks at the Heritage Lottery Fund fell in love immediately.

We love it when a plan comes together.

We were asked to create the background elements and opening titles, and to put the rest of the project together after the initial edit.

The interviews were all shot in HD against a green-screen, which naturally meant all our assets needed to also work in high definition.  We chroma-keyed the green-screen, and layered everything together, plus also creating the title sequence.

The resulting video was then delivered to the client on Blu-ray.

We are oh so happy to announce the completion of our parts for the TROLLEY project.
For those of you who didn’t know, we were taking care of all of the 3D modelling and animation for one of the Digishorts 2009 films, funded by Screen WM; TROLLEY.

The film was Produced by Rachel Carter, Directed by Anna Shelton, with Phil Wood drafted in as Director of Photography.

In our roles as animators and VFX artists we went the whole nerdy-nine-yards on this brief… turning up on set to take measurements, collecting more reference photographs of the trolleys we would have to model, and we even took our big shiny silver ball with us so we could record the correct lighting information for the 3D scenes we produced. Paul almost had a Dorkgasm noting focal length numbers from the prime lenses attached to the RED ONE, so we could match the camera in our virtual sets. He is easily pleased is our Paul.

Our pipeline (for those of you who may be interested) featured Lightwave 3D, Zbrush, After Effects, Premiere Pro and REDCINE, allowing us to work to the highest quality specs. The project was originated in a mix of 2K and 4K resolution plates.

The film is having its first outing on Tuesday the 3rd November at The Electric Cinema in Birmingham – where all of the cast, crew and us back-room boys have been invited to view our work on the big screen along with the other Digishorts from that particular batch. Awesome stuff!

Anyway, we’ll leave you with some images and vids of the parts that we took care of, and hopefully we’ll be showing you the full final edit sometime shortly after the Premiere.

The very exciting happenings for us, is that our 30s Reaction to Litter piece (for Birmingham City Council) is on at various cinemas around Birmingham for now three weeks!

It was going to be two weeks originally, but the Council were lucky enough to get an extra week on the house.

Ace. Just hope we get time to go and see our handywork.

That version was distributed on DVDs, and shown in public places.  It caused a fair stir within the Council, as we’d produced the kind of product that they never thought they could have achieved.

The full original piece is viewable below: