Smoke & Mirrors, New York CG artist Steve Parish and Flame impresario Nick Tanner flawlessly execute Shilo's concept in this promo for HBO's re-launched concert series. The promo will play on the HBO network and website June 11th with Justin Timberlake's inaugural performance September 3rd.
Shards of broken glass drift through black space. As they draw closer to one another, strong block titling appears. Slowly swirling together, the shards connect, re-forming into a disco ball that had been exploded. JT's stoic image appears inside for a moment...then another explosion and he's gone.
"We had an extremely tight schedule for this one, and having extensive style frames and a good animatic from Shilo, meant that we could work very efficiently," said Lead CG Artist Steve Parish. "Both Shilo and ourselves discussed shooting some live action elements, but it was decided that a 3D approach would give us total control and flexibility. The biggest challenge of the piece was creating the explosion of the ball. It has over 6000 pieces that had to be placed and animated using real-world simulation software, this took 2 days to calculate. Using this method ensured no two pieces of mirror ever intersected. We added little nuances such as scratches and fingerprints to the shards which helped create more realism."
"Not only was this a great opportunity to work with design company Shilo, it was good reason to show off all our new toys too," said Sr. Flame Artist Nick Tanner. "Being 100% cg generated shards of glass, the dust and ambiance was actually all created in flame, utilizing speed six and sapphire sparks to finish the look. All the cg elements we rendered vastly over length on the new 50 processor render farm so that Flame had the flexibility to speed ramp as desired by the director. To complete the look the multitude of tiny ambient particles were generated in Flame on a shot by shot basis with specific reflections and animations. This would have taken ages on older systems, but these lightening fast Flames meant we could concentrate on the creative and still have the job started, designed and finished in 10 days flat."
Tech Toolbox
Autodesk Flame 2007 running on HP Linux Machines
Softimage XSI 6.0
Credits
Client: HBO
Spot Title: JT - Tease
Air Date: June 10
Agency: HBO
CD: Chris Stifel
Producer: Daniel Zibulsky
Prod Company: Shilo
Director: Shilo
CD: Andre Stringer
Designer: Michael Darmanin
Post/Effects: Smoke & Mirrors/NY
CG Artist(s): Steve Parish, Serkan Ertekin
Sr. Flame Artist: Nick Tanner
Head of Production: Cary Flaum
Editorial: Shilo
Editor: Nathan Caswell
Producer: Lindsay Bodanza
Sound Design: Crispin Thump
Smoke & Mirrors
The New York and London-based design, animation and VFX studio, Smoke & Mirrors was founded by Creative Director Sean Broughton. The company has been synonymous with creativity, originality, and innovation since its inception. Smoke & Mirrors has always succeeded because of its collaborative approach, and along with CEO Penny Verbe and CTO Mark Wildig, the company has built strong creative relationships with directors, producers, agencies, and clients alike.
Each office is fully networked together with complementary systems allowing the facilities to share resources, thus expanding local capacity. Close involvement with manufacturers and developers has kept Smoke & Mirrors at the forefront of technology and on all levels.
Smoke & Mirrors diverse range of projects include: feature films from ranging from Harry Potter to James Bond, award winning commercials, music videos and television.
Smoke & Mirrors: https://www.dexigner.com/directory/detail/9102