The last winter quarter of my time here at SCAD has officially come, and I am stoked to announce that I will be working with a team of talented artists in a production simulated class supervised by our professors and the amazing mentors from The Mill in New York. It is such an amazing opportunity to have guidance from artists in the industry to create a project that truly challenges us as students. We were assigned to teams, each with very talented artists. My team's name is "Team Ocelot" because we're all cute, but fierce, like Ocelots. We were tasked to create a car commercial that pushed the standards of the "average" commercial. My team and I met over the week to come up with possible ideas for project. We all loved the idea of creating a hybrid project of both CG integration and creating a full CG environment. After much deliberation, we finally came up with an idea that we all loved!
"The Car of Tomorrow, Today."
My team and I wanted to have a commercial that marketed our car as "so ahead of it's time" that the company is selling it today. Our concept consists of our car racing down a futuristic light tunnel and exits into a portal that then manifests into the world of today. The car then emerges from the portal, makes a slight turn, and stops. Our tagline "The Car of Tomorrow, Today" appears along with the car logo.
Previsualization
References - Light Tunnel
We were really inspired by this Lexus commercial for the concept of our futuristic light tunnel. The elegant lights and it's interesting shape inspired our design as well. As one of the lighters on this project, the idea of a light tunnel excited me because of all the possible opportunities we could have with color, mood, and shaders.
References - Portal
The idea of a portal actually started off as a joke, but when it was brought up in team discussion we all thought that it would be really cool to work with. These two portal videos really excited us, especially our FX artists, on the story and aesthetic of our commercial.
This second video is from a VFX artist named AYOUBHA on Vimeo that we thought was also cool reference for our portal. The fire and smoke FX were what really attracted us to this idea.
Another cool idea for a portal was from an FX Artist names Pam Wong-Bunten. They had a very awesome particle effect portal in Houdini that interested us in a possible version of our portal. You can find her process here: https://www.skaifa.com/copy-of-particle-statue?fbclid=IwAR1Hk2gx5OVCdqS_X3gWfo0KhzWr0f3tehKKiHAO2kVisfkJIeTxU2gWCVM
References - Locations
For our background plate, we really liked the aesthetic of the Savannah Theater. We thought this was a good location because there's no parking allowed (so filming would be easier), there's a good color palette, and it would be more effective to portray the aspect of time. Ideally, we would like to shoot after it rains so that we can challenge ourselves with the ground reflections. Our backup plan is to shoot down the street at Lucas Theater.
Car Model
For our car model, we looked for a car that was sleek, elegant, and futuristic. We found this model of a Ferrari 458 Italia and thought that it would be perfect, although we would change it to blue.
Color Palette
After looking at our Savannah Theater location, we found a split compliment color theme that we all agreed on. It would be blue, green, and red-orange. The first shot would be a complimentary color palette of blue and orange for contrast. Since the first shot is all CG, we thought that the two shots would have good contrast especially with our color palette and environments. As a lighter, I think that working with this theme would be super interesting and fun to work with.
Final Thoughts
The ideation stage really got me excited to start production on this project. I'm stoked to be on a team with really talented artists who are equally as passionate about making this project. Challenging my typical style (CG work) to do more integration is one of the biggest things that I am looking forward to in the next 10 weeks or so. I'm also excited to be working with the mentors from The Mill because I believe that our work would have even more guidance and quality.