The Volkswagen Beetle ad that I worked on won the Gold Statue award at this year’s London International Awards. Incidentally, the Audi Oomph commercial that I worked on this year in April was also a finalist in the visual effects category. And to top it all off, The Mill was named Post Production Company of the year 2011. Congratulations to all involved!
To see the full list of winners, visit: http://www.liaentries.com/winners/
I had a small part to play in this ad, adding a super fine layer of hair on top of the feathers to give them a softer, more realistic edge. I added the layer the standard Softimage hair tools and then rendered them with Arnold.
This was for Superbowl 2011 and was meant as a teaser for the (then) new upcoming VW Beetle shape. (For those who don’t know, and as I recently found out, Superbowl is the world’s biggest advertising event).
I was responsible for shading the Bess Beetles, and for rendering the first two shots, and the shot where the hero beetle jumps over a field of CG dandelions (which I did as well).
The CG dandelion was built using an ICE setup that populated individual seeds according to rules of Phyllotaxis. All this was done for a dandelion explosion, which was eventually dropped from the ad.
One of the videos linked below is its making-of. You can see my screen at 1:28, with a render of the Bess Beetle in the background in Nuke.
This new ad from Audi introduces the hummingbird as an allusion to the A6′s lightweight construction, agility and efficiency.
I was involved in this ad for over two months, working to define the anisotropic metallic look of the hummingbird until it was approved by Audi, then moving on to shading the Bees, and then finally on to actual shots. All shots with the bees in them were done by me, except for the smoke simulations, which were done by the talented Ciaran Moloney.
Hats off to all the bunch of talented people I worked with on this job.
{The Mill’s official video link}
{VES Society Nomination in the following categories}
-Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Commercial or Video Game Trailer category,
-Outstanding Animated Character in a Broadcast Program or Commercial category and
-Outstanding Created Environment in a Broadcast Program or Commercial category
This is one of my personal favourites. Larger than life elements of the A1, placed in to studio sets made this for a very classy ad. The A1 might be small, but this puts the focus on the features that make it one desirable car.
I had to render a shot with a gigantic CG headlight with mental ray, lighting up around 30 or so CG rabbits which were rendered with Arnold. The shot is at 00:17 seconds in to the ad. Gemma Aliaga did some fantastic animations for the rabbits.
The shot with the glass shards forming the roof is mine (around 00:14). The initial set-up for the glass shards forming up for this was done by Ian Baxter. I took over from there and shaded and rendered the glass. Additional controls were added via ICE to give more control over the animation of the glass shards to allow more ‘art-direction’ of this shot.
I had loads of fun working on this job, not just because of the soundtrack but also because I worked with some really cool folks. I rolled out the shots-pipeline for this ad for other render guys to pick up. I rendered the shots with the raspberry closeups, some distant shots, and the water splash pass. The shaders for the fruits were done by Patrick Kraft.
(Linked to Vimto’s channel on YouTube. Ad not yet published on The Mill’s official website)
I was tasked with completing the last 3 shots of this ad where an entire building lights up, with patterns of light displaying on its front and sides. A real building was replaced with a CG one, and a quick ICE setup was done to control the light patterns.
(Linked to colleague’s video on vimeo. Ad not yet published on The Mill’s official website)
A quick little job to insert CG balloons falling and hitting, bouncing off objects in the shot. My shot’s 33 seconds in to the ad.
This was my first project at The Mill. I was tasked with changing socks in to flowers in the shot above, and coming up a way to render entire landscapes made out of towels. The latter was done in ICE and mental ray. My set-up for the towels was based on strands and their resolution was controlled dynamically based on their importance. There were controls added to allow for gusts of wind, and for towel strands to bend if a character walked over them. Towards the end of the project, I ended up rendering some shots too, including one where I had to change an underwear in to flowers 
My first task during my days at Men From Mars was to lead the build of steam-powered ships for a film called Mutant Chronicles. Together with colleague Julian Johnson, I modeled, textured and shaded the ships. Following the build phase, work commenced on delivering shots.
These trails were generated using velocity vectors on the surface of the aaOcean plugin, a seldom used feature. For this particular example, I have generated just the aft wake but when coupled with a bow wave with associated foam, the results can be quite interesting. Follow the link below to see an animated version on vimeo.
I used to do a lot of personal artwork. In fact, that is all I did when I first started CG in 1992 until I landed my first job in the UK back in 2002 after being featured in CGChannel/CGTalk. Since then, unfortunately, I have had less and less time to do any personal work. In fact, the last time I published any of my personal artwork was in 2006. This post shows some of them.
This is from the days when I really wanted to write a smoke/fire simulator for Softimage. Based on the Stam/Fedkiw papers with a little instability added.
