Creating the perfect computer becomes a display of sculptured elegance in this spot for the XPS13 Dell Ultrabook "Crafted." Sid Lee collaborated with MassMarket Creative Director Jens Mebes to create this beautiful demonstration of building the new Dell laptop from the inside out.
To feature the lightness and portability of Dell's latest small size laptop, Mebes worked with the creative team at Sid Lee to devise a refined sculptural look that purposed every part of the computer, from the smallest screw on a circuit board to the laptop's screen, and to place each part in context of the laptop's overall design.
In order to convey the method of human creation, an artistic process was identified for each shot. The liquid forming the motherboard and molding the gorilla glass screen was taken from the art of glass blowing. The bending of the metallic aluminum edges was mirrored after Richard Serra's bent-steel sculptures. The layering of the carbon fiber strings imitated the process of weaving wicker. Mebes noted that "coming up with an idea to do one started a bit of a chain reaction in which the creation of one element informs and triggers the creation of another. Retaining the fluidity and artistic quality in which the individual pieces were being formed and molded was crucial in communicating the aspect of human involvement and establishing a synergy between art and technology."
The MassMarket team came upon a few challenges for the spot. Deciding what was going to be done in 3D and what was going to be done in 2D while creating the liquid was one. In reality a liquid has real world properties and reflects and refracts its environment. The liquid in the spot was hyperreal and there was nothing to reflect or refract in the scenes. To solve this the team started with standard 3D passes and rendered a number of id mattes that allowed them to isolate any aspect of the scene they wanted. Then they experimented with 2D filters (glass, emboss, distort, etc) and used the id mattes to selectively lay in the newly created 2D layers.
Another challenge came when transitioning from liquid to metal. The team started in 2D using id and gradient mattes from 3D. MassMarket's Lead Flame Artist, Jamie Scott, said "in some cases we'd create a completely glass version and a completely metal version of an object and then pick and chose which bits looked best in either material." The result is a fluidly elegant rendering of the new Dell laptop.