When German telecommunications organization Deutsche Telekom had to tell a story of the increasing interconnectivity, it chose an convey it as a visual metaphor representing the body, nature and the universe. Director Carl Erik Rinsch, in turn, turned to MPC LA, to create the advertisement’s tone and style, and generate about 35 seconds of CG animation in just one month.
The result was a colorful web of energy spreading across the earth, morphing into vast city skylines and then people. Working from references provided by the director, MPC 3D supervisor Dan Marsh and concept artist Casey McIntyre created this spectacle using Houdini and custom procedurals to echo patterns in nature and render hundreds of millions of particles.
The studio simultaneously previsualized the storyboards to explore composition, animation timing and camera movement. They imported Maya animations into Houdini to create procedural animations and lighting effects. Head of 3D Andy Boyd and Marsh oversaw a team of animators and lighters, while 2D supervisor Jake Montgomery completed the look in compositing and enhanced it in Flame. MPC LA colorist Derek Hansen performed color duties for the live action portion of the spot.
“On a one-month production schedule, creating :35 seconds of material from scratch required a focused collaboration,” Marsh said. “It was important to set the look in our concept work so that the CG team had a real visual goal to reach given the spot’s abstract look. With everything being full CG, we had a lot of room for creative freedom. Everyone nailed their jobs, and we ended up with a highly original, engrossing spot.”