Making of : NISSAN PULSAR

NissanPulsar_RecomFarmhouse

Our first project working with the great Rick Guest was a complex one, promoting the release of the brand new Nissan Pulsar. With a brief containing a multitude of elements and inspirations ranging from a cloud of dust to an electromagnetic iris, we needed to create an event to symbolise the birth of the Pulsar.

As Rick only had a very small time window to shoot the car in Madrid, we did an angle-finding session in CGI with him beforehand. As a result the car angle was client-approved by the time he got to the studio, saving some precious time. He also shot lots of cloud elements in a different photographic studio in London.

image2

Once we had all the elements to work with, our retouchers started to assemble the background for the car, piecing together multiple images to create the explosion.

PULSARFinal

The Iris component of the background needed to feel dynamic in order to integrate with the explosive elements shot by Rick. To achieve this our CGI team researched and tested different techniques ahead of the shoot to find the most suitable for the job. It made sense to treat this element not as a still life, but as the frame of a video.

The following clips show some of the many particle simulations used to create the Iris as well as additional atmospheric effects for the shot.

Below is how some of the final Iris elements looked before being composited into the shot

 

Aside from the iris and the light burst, the other CGI element was the reflection of the environment into the car. The camera and car already existed in the digital scene making it relatively straight forward to line up the reflections which were then composited onto the photographic car by the retouchers. See the reflection in the screenshot below:

car_reflection_web

Hard work but really well done guys!

NissanPulsar_RecomFarmhouse

CREDITS:

Client: Nissan
Agency: TBWA G1
Art Director: Carina Wachsmann
Creative Director: Nick Cooper
Photographer: Rick Guest
CGI Director: Kristian Turner
CGI Artist: Kristian Turner
Post Artist: Pepe Alram, Kate Brown

Making of : Ford Mustang by Uli Heckmann

13-298_TEAD_Mustang_Wave_House_OnSet_CGI_COMP11_PP_FINALART_sRGB_1600pxQ80

This is one of many images of the Ford Mustang we have produced, rendered and retouched in our New York and London studios, photography by Uli Heckmann (you can find more images here).

We get asked a lot about our workflow and how we work together with our clients to make sure they get the results they want. We work very closely with photographers, making sure they are happy with the image before any presentations. Every client is different of course and there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so having our artists understand what the client wants before starting is fundamental. For this we try to involve them as much as possible in the direct communication with the client from the beginning, especially on projects where a creative dialogue is essential.

Another key point is each of our studios having an internal creative director. Not only does this ensure consistency amongst all images in a series, especially when a job is handled by studios in different locations, but also helps maintaining a high quality standard. Before an image leaves our studio to go out to the agency, it needs to get the internal CD approval.

Our Artists also discuss their work amongst each other, making each image go through a number of internal revisions before a round is delivered. As a result the first round usually looks solid, which we believe is essential to great end-results, because it is very difficult for an art director or photographer to direct an image that is far from where it’s supposed to be.

Below is a gif animation showing the making of the image. Further below is a typical example of the three rounds system from the first stage where we position all the elements and develop the initial look, all the way to the final image.

mustangwhite

 

CREDITS

Client: Ford USA
Photographer: Uli Heckmann
Agency: Team Detroit
Creative Director: Ryan Breight, Brad Jendza
CGI Artists: Recom Farmhouse Team
Post Artists: Recom Farmhouse Team

Making of : Pleasure Grounds by Clemens Ascher

Look at these images and look again because what first appears to be a theme park is in reality a carefully constructed world balancing on the threshold of leisure and order.
Shot by photographer Clemens Ascher, the series Pleasure Grounds depicts scenes where people are shown in a moment of leisure but the space they inhabit is bleak and slightly threatening. Military weapons and wild domesticated animals populate this landscape and as viewers we are unsure what is real and what is ficticious. 

Pleasure Grounds
Pleasure Grounds

We have collaborated with Clemens in the realization of this fine art project, playing with altering the proportions of objects and people, choosing slightly off-putting poses for the models and using extremely bleak lighting to take the scene to the limits of reality. Clemens wanted to create an artificial world, nearly two-dimensional, where missiles, animals and people would function like interchangeable figurines, marionettes playing on a theatrical stage.

Pleasure Grounds

Whilst the background and animals were shot in different parts of the world from Austria and Switzerland to the US, the models were shot in a studio in East London. Aside from Clemens, part of the creative team on set was Christoph, our creative director, fashion stylist Alice Whiting, prop stylist Elena Riccabona, hair and make-up artist Brooke Neilson who all greatly contributed to the realization of the project with an exquisite selection of props, costumes and style.

Pleasure Grounds

Here are some snaps taken by Christoph during the shoot.

Our CGI artists created the missiles in Maya and added some texture (such as rust, dust and scratches) in Mari for extra reality.

Below are some screenshots from Maya.

aceifgab
gdhehdbj
hfbjdidc

And here are some screenshots from Mari.

idjgdcce
cgahcfff

After shooting the individual elements, Clemens created the layouts for each image. Following his directions, we started to assemble all the pieces from background to architecture, to the armament and the people. Here’s a short gif animation of how it all came together.

 

See the whole project here

CREDITS:

Photography: Clemens Ascher
Fashion Stylist: Alice Whiting
Props Stylist: Elena Riccabona
Hair and Make-up: Brooke Neilson
CGI Director: Christoph Bolten
CGI Artists: Kristian Turner, Richard Jenkinson, Florian Einfalt
Post Artists: Pepe Alram, Kate Brown, Riikka Eiro

Making of : FORD KA

Ford_ka_Web

Shot by the Wade Brothers this funny advertising campaign for the Ford Ka shows a woman who paints everything around her in pink, the colour of her new car.

The photographic duo contacted us because they needed a solution on how to change the colour of the house as they could neither paint it, nor shift the colours in post. In fact by doing this at the retouching stage the final result would have looked fake as all the diffused material on top of the brick work would have remained in place. As a solution we proposed to do a 3D-scan of the entire building to enable us to replace the painted parts of the house with a 3d model, and therefore adding the needed realism.

Read more

Making of : INLINGUA

Commissioned by advertising agency Kolle Rebbe, this ad has been made by the Recom team in Stuttgart for InLingua, a language school that offers English courses for German speakers. While this ad will make sense to Germans, it won’t for almost everybody else, so a little explanation might be required: us Germans infamously pronounce the “th” as “z” – but in German the “z”-sound is pronounced with an “s” – hence the “s” is the letter being taken care of in these ads with the punchline “We take care of your th-problem”. Now while jokes are usually not that funny anymore if it takes 5 minutes to explain them, this is still and interesting example of how we composite together photographic and CG elements when making images.

Read more

The making of: NISSAN QASHQAI

13-223_TBWP_Nissan_Q_HELIPAD_COMP09_KAT_internal_FINAL

Commissioned by advertising agency TBWA Paris, this is the first of a few images made for the launch campaign of the new Nissan Qashqai, which already has been awarded ‘WhatCar?’ car of the year 2014.
The Qashqai is a hugely popular model and this new generation was unveiled about a week before we delivered the visual. Working with such highly anticipated cars was destined to be a little nerve wrecking as the pressure is on, but ultimately a highly enjoyable experience. Our senior retoucher Kate Booker and CGI director Kristian Turner went to Paris twice to present and discuss the project.

Read more

The making of: LINCOLN

13-117_ASCH_HudsonRouge_Lincoln_SHOT11_COMP08_DAV_FlatFinalSent

All images: Clemens Ascher

Before Christmas I met with photographer Clemens Ascher, who was very kindly helping me with a photographic shoot in Austria, his native land. Clemens has shot for Lincoln a very strong photographic series of images. I told him I intended to write something on him in our blog and when I asked what was his experience of shooting this job, he said: “please do not write about the difficulties of shooting in the heat of the California desert, everybody focusses on that… write about the team, it was a great team to work with and it was the team that made these images what they are” Read more