Back to Wereworld

We've just created an update to the Wereworld trailer we made back in September last year, see earlier post here. This is to coincide with the second book in the series, due out on the 7th of July.


Here's the new trailer:


The main change from the original was introducing the red colours towards the end, and the inclusion of the books in the end scene.

Mattress Man

We were recently asked to complete a set of bumpers to sponsor two shows on ITV 2. The job was to animate the clients character, Mattress Man, in two locations: a red carpet premiere, and in his bedroom.

The geometry was built in 3DS Max, and is quite simple but effective. We used V-ray to render the sequence. As ever it gave use some lovely results, see the close-ups of the bedroom background. Highlights look especially nice - soft without looking blurred.

One interesting challenge was timing a sequence of camera flashes. Flashing or strobing can cause a lot of problems for some people, so we had to get approval and clearance for the flashing sequence. Once the flash timing was signed off we placed flashing lights in the scene, but additional flaring effects were added in post.

In total we created eight versions, ranging in length from 5 to 15 seconds. Here is the 15 second version:

Super Casino, Super 3D text

Sometimes a job doesn't have to be mammoth and complex to be enjoyable. Our partners at Dene were shooting a live-action commercial for Super Casino, and they needed some 3D text to appear. Our contribution might have been small, but the final ad is rather nice.

Here is the 3D text in question:

And here is a video blog by Dene charting the live action shoot:


And here is the completed ad:

New showreel

Here is our new showreel!

Qurios Showreel Feb 2011 from Qurios on Vimeo.

Quality Solicitors Commercial

Here is a breakdown of our work on a recently complete commercial:Quality Solicitors

Pre-Production

The commercial began with a brainstorming meeting where we proposed three or four possible creative briefs for the client to choose from. The one he really loved was them most complex, but we all felt we could do something very special with it.

After we'd agreed on a concept, and an initial script was written, the next stage was to come up with the look of the characters and the environment. Initially the main character was going to be a man, so we did quite a bit of development work to nail his design.

...and then he had a sex change! It was decided to change the main character to a woman, so we did some more designs until we settled on what would eventually become Mrs QS.
The male designs were not wasted, they became the template for the other characters who would populate the commercial.

Next we came up with a look and feel for the environment. We did some colour studies of the first few scenes in the commercial:


Here is a little video we put together for the client to show his members. It shows some of the work-in-progress during pre-production.

Quality Solicitors - the making of from Dene Films on Vimeo.

Model building for this commercial was quite an undertaking. The characters were all variations on a generic male and female base. As well as Mrs QS we had two female characters and three male characters. Each needed to be distinct from each other. Here are a few renders of the completed models.





Finally we built props including cars:



Production

Once we had all our assets in place we could start animating. We had a very rough animatic to work to:

QS Animatic 05 from Qurios on Vimeo.

And then came the mammoth job of animating, lighting and rendering. Here are some stills from the completed renders:

And here is the completed commercial:

Quality Solcitors Final from Qurios on Vimeo.

Rise of the Wolf trailer

Here's a job we've just completed to promote the first novel by Curtis Jobling. We've known Curtis for far too long and we're often dragged into his insane schemes for world domination, this was no exception.

Pencil sketches were scanned into Photoshop, coloured and separated into sections to be animated in After Effects.

Mongrels - BBC 3

We recently finished VFX and animation on a new comedy called Mongrels, BBC THREE's first urban, multi-species, adult puppet comedy.

I'll be putting up some more info on our contribution once broadcast is finished, so for now make sure you watch it on iplayer, or on telly. You can find it on Tuesday nights at 22.30 on BBC 3.