Design / Direction / Animation / Compositing

Casual Films was commissioned by Frameworks to create a short video about a new retailer to consumer service (Together Commerce) that Toshiba had purchased from IBM. Toshiba is currently working with retailers to improve that service for the future and the animation tells the story of how consumer retail has changed from its humble beginnings in local markets to the overwhelming variety of product choices in online stores we have today. Working with the talented guys at Casual Films I designed and directed the whole short, modelled all 3D assets, animated various elements and composited all the rendered sequences.

CLIENT Toshiba
PRODUCTION Casual Films
AGENCY Frameworks
RIGGING & ANIMATION Roberto Zincone
ANIMATION & COMPOSTING George Shelbourn

R&D / Animation

weareseventeen were commissioned in 2012 to create the Easter idents and show packages for BT Vision. The only inspiration reference they received from the client was the traditional animation device of a zoetrope/phonotrope. We understood the basic mechanics about how they worked but I was tasked with researching and developing how we could push the concept to new levels. The final idea designed by weareseventeen was based around an Easter Cake that would tell a story as it rotated from the top down to the bottom. Once we had figured out how to get the movements we wanted it was a simple case of modelling the cake in 3D and then rotating it the correct amount of revolutions per second. 

CLIENT BT Vision
PRODUCTION We Are Seventeen
DESIGN & DIRECTION Mark Haley

R&D / Animation

weareseventeen worked with BBC Worldwide to develop the concept for a series of TV idents to be played during the Diwali Festival in 2012. The emphasis was on cloth, light and colour, which had to run across all three idents. The eventual design direction created by We Are Seventeen was based around surreal light, orbs, delicate fabric lanterns and dynamic electric cloth. This project proved an exciting technical challenge for myself as I was tasked with creating the realistic cloth animations, seen in the idents. I was also responsible for setting camera shots and creating an edit.

CLIENT BBC Entertainment
PRODUCTION We Are Seventeen
DESIGN & DIRECTION Mark Haley

Fluid Simulations

Box Creative, the team behind the rebrand of the KISS music channel, appointed weareseventeen to develop the idents for their new show packages. Using a combination of mocap data and hand animation for characters, we created a surreal collection of idents, which complemented the rebrand. I worked on the fluid simulations of the strutter animation, which required the motion captured character to be filled with liquid of different colours that mixed together when moving. After many hours of Realflow simulations and deformers I feel I achieved the look we set out for. 

CLIENT KISS
PRODUCTION We Are Seventeen
DESIGN & DIRECTION Mark Haley

Design / Animation

Working with weareseventeen on a pitch for Yoplait to launch their new Greek 100 yogurt range, I got to design and develop lots of different surprise based animations. The original pitch included up to twenty different animation ideas that were eventually whittled down to eight. During this job I was responsible for the simulation of the dress of the cancan dancer, the design and structural animation of the spiral slide, the design and animation of the parachuting pot and the animation of the skiing and bouncing ball pots. 

CLIENT Yoplait
PRODUCTION We Are Seventeen
DESIGN & DIRECTION Steve Simmonds

Design / Direction / Animation

After directing a small project for Uber Creative in 2010, I decided to explore and develop the initial concept into a new project for myself. Drawing inspiration from the HP hands and the iPod clothes advert, I created Frames. It started out as a technical exercise, which developed into a fully-fledged short after I saw the potential for the technique. Frames explores a variety of personal experiences through the Frame of each character. I had some additional help with the break dancing 3D character from  my good friend Obrad Milivojevic. 

Design / Direction / Animation

Hired by Box Creative I created a show package opener for Kerrang! called Party Rocks! The package had to be modular in design to enable greater edit variation on air. I designed and animated the rock characters incorporating different elements from the music sub genres of Kerrang! Each shot was broken down to include a wipe in/out to keep the edit (and any modified edit) as seamless as possible. The party rockers (and rigging/weighting) were my first character animation project and something I hope to develop further in the future. 

CLIENT Kerrang!
PRODUCTION Box Creative

Design / Direction / Animation

Uber Creative hired me to create a few transition animations that were to be part of a larger video. They need to show how the website they had created could be scalable for a multitude of devices from desktop computers to mobile phones. As these transitions worked really well as a part of the long form video I decided to develop them into a short project for myself. With the animations relatively the same I re-timed the movements to the music track Fortune Days by The Glitch Mob. This was a very quick turn around project with everything being completed in roughly six days.

Design / Animation

Bauer Media were looking to create an animation to celebrate the successes of their radio division. After being inspired by weareseventeen’s Strange Arrangements animation they brought the company on board to design and direct the short. The Bauer radio piece takes the viewer on a surreal journey through a topsy-turvy world, with one-eyed butterfly, flying ears and suspended islands . I was brought in by weareseventeen to animate all of the 3D assets as well as model a variety of assets. We wanted to keep the whole animation as seamless as possible, almost as if filmed from a single camera shot. Radium Audio was a perfect fit to create the sound and music.

CLIENT Yoplait
PRODUCTION We Are Seventeen
DESIGN & DIRECTION Steve Simmonds
SOUND DESIGN Radium Audio

Design / Animation

It was both incredibly exciting and a great honour to be part of the team at Crystal CG creating all the visual graphics for the London Olympics opening and closing ceremonies last summer. It was an understandably long project with months of R&D, pushing the possibilities of the display technology we had at our disposal. I was lucky enough to work across both teams with the majority of my time spent on the closing ceremony, specifically the I am a Walrus performance, Freddy Mercury Call response and the Darcey Bussell Ballet of Fire performance.

Direction / Animation

Pangaea Creative was asked by Braiform (a reusable coat hanger company) to come up with a way to advertise the benefit of using their products to retailers. The idea was centered around creating fun, playful characters to tell the story of how reusable coat hangers can be beneficial to both the environment, as well as company expenses. I worked with Pangaea to animate and direct the short project. We wanted the playful nature of the coat hanger characters to be conveyed in both the look and feel of the finished animation. 

CLIENT Braiform
PRODUCTION Pangaea Creative

Design

Eastman commissioned Uber Creative to come up with a pitch to get Walmart on board with their sustainability and recyclable plastic materials. I designed the frames, which were presented to Walmart and eventually developed into an animation. I chose a limited colour palette with a plastic feel to the 3D world as well as giving major thought to the animation, which I planned as being a single camera move i.e. seamless transitions. The world I created had many little-big planet style features in that all elements felt like they were on a rolling sphere with a curved horizon.

Design

Whilst working for Uber Creative I was asked to pitch a variety of concept styles to Eastman Chemical Company for a new brand video. I wanted each style to encompass connectivity and network concepts whilst not feeling too mechanical. The core idea I designed was based on DNA and molecular structures. From layered molecular spheres that peeled back to reveal the variety of divisions at Eastman to a vector network of twisting and turning nodes, we delivered an attractive package of options. Eastman chose the vector circles, which they ended up pushing further into their brand style across all of their divisions.

Animation

Grass Roots Group was looking for ways to show off all of the product promotions they had created for their clients in an attractive and informative manner. They approached Uber Creative to develop a fully animated microsite and I along with the designer was tasked with animating a selection of dioramas for clients such as Nestlé and Virgin. Each of the animations had to feel seamless, whilst still retaining the interactive nature of the microsite – hence why in the video there are moments of static non-animation.

Design / Animation

Uber Creative was commissioned to shoot and film an incentive scheme organised by Project Link motivations for Phones4U. This involved taking 40 employees out to the Bahamas to recreate the Survivor TV show experience. I was lucky (very, very lucky) enough to part of the film crew that went out with the event organisers. Upon returning I created this opener for the finished video using the colour palette of Phones4U and vector designs to set the scene for the show. If only all jobs involved a trip to desert island paradise. 

CLIENT Phones4U
PRODUCTION Uber Creative

Design / Animation

During my time at Uber Creative they were approached by a property development agency called Betternest to create an animation about the services they provide. The animation was shown on LCD televisions at a property expo where they had also designed a brochure which was handed out to the visitors. We felt that a pop-up book style animation based on the brochure seemed the best fit to explain what Betternest do. I was responsible for the design and animation of all the 3D elements within the video. As well as compositing them together for the finished edit. 

CLIENT Betternest
PRODUCTION Uber Creative