Kerry Logistics’ Video Wall

This project is not classified as a commercial. It was meant to be privately displayed inside the company’s (Kerry Logistics) reception area. It’s a couple of metres high, six times across. Pretty big, if you ask me, though I’m sure there’s always some guy who can pee higher. There always is.

Anyway, that’s the reason that I can’t show, at least in its final form, what it was. But I do have pictures — pretty pictures — of the stuff that I got to contribute.

Mocap data, to geo in Maya, then LW for point rendering.
LW nodal displacements with the help of Denis Pontonnier’s tools.

Particles made easy by LW’s nodal displacement fancy-footwork.
Additive particle morphing in LW using nodal displacements.
RealFlow HYBRIDO sim. LW for instance rendering.

Mass transformations using Denis Pontonnier’s toolkit and LW instancing.
Nixed scene. LW displacements, scene and render.
Motion graphic shenanigans in LW using 2-point polygons and instancing.

The keyword in this project was ‘repetition’. Now, a guy in the studio kept using the word ‘iterative process’. But no: this wasn’t iteration. Iteration means:

…repetition of a mathematical or computational procedure applied to the result of a previous application, typically as a means of obtaining successively closer approximations to the solution of a problem.

The operative phrase is ‘successively closer approximations to the solution of a problem’. If it were actually the case that in the so-called creative industry that iteration existed, of which my experiential opinion says is more of anomaly than a rule, it would follow that some end goal could be discerned at the beginning. This was not the case here. It began with an idea, then killed, to reincarnate into a new form, killed again, rose from the ashes, ad nauseum. Indeed, nausea is actually a good word for it. Isn’t just better just say repetition to be truthful? Instead, we are encouraged to think it’s iterative, so as to regard each ‘iteration’ not the pointless exercise it actually was.

Here, I also encountered the novel concept of ‘not second-guessing’ the client. What this actually meant was that ‘the client doesn’t know what they want, but we do.’ Basically, a Jedi mind trick. The hilarity of it all is that we’re not Jedi. No indeedy. Hence, the bulk of the setbacks were clients totally rejecting the concept and, despite the studio’s assumptive airs, we took it by the balls — what choice did we really have? They were the ones with the money — and re-did it again and again and again. Joke’s on us. Actually, joke’s on me, because I was at the bottom of that food chain. As I say, things like money/wealth may be too dense to trickle down. But work, overtime, and frustration, those things don’t sit at the top for too long.

At the of the day the repetition stopped. Where we got to is for Kerry Logisitics employees and guests to see. Where we had came from is, as they say, history.

 

Commercial: My Tax

Click picture to view on Vimeo.

My last NZ-based shoot. These were a series of commercials. We shot in around Christchurch in many different locations for several days. Rob McLaughlin was director, and Warwick Wrigley the DOP. This was a great experience working with this crew.

In this project I was primarily the on-set visual effects supervisor. Back in the studio, however, I had really nothing much to contribute as the post-production crew had already been slated. I had been assigned to work on Toyko Ghoul following the conclusion of the shooting.

 

 

Commercial: Pepsi Emoji

pepsi_thumb

 

This project, far in time (relativistically, not relatively, since I’m feeling scientifically pretentious at the moment for no apparent reason I can point out), is but a blur to me. Done primarily by Terry (rendering), I helped by the theoretical workflow and literal rigging of the bottles, including the liquid inside the bottles. The sand animation — not really sand, but the deformations applied to make it appear that the bottles are interacting with the sand — were done by applying ‘shrink wrap’ deformers. That came as an afterthought, obviously, because the timeframe was so short, one couldn’t think beyond a few days.

Watch the series on Vimeo below, if you’d like.