Bringing this little character to life meant the team had to effectively capture its every detail and movement, pooling expertise within R&D, CGI and concept development. Alex Pickup, our creative lead on set said:

“The brief required the chameleon to look as life-like as possible. An unorthodox animal to create, it was important that we did sufficient research and mirrored all of the subtle movements unique to their species. Through extensive research we developed references and moodboards to hone in on the perfect look for the client, an essential stage to sign off before production can begin.

“We then built the chameleon in CGI with a realistic skeleton utilising rigging tools to recreate the correct motions. Capturing the nuances breathes life into any character animation, with no motion capture one of our artists lovingly hand-animated its every move. We employed our tried and tested 3D pipeline which was then used to augment the life-like creature.”

Initially the team had planned on creating the background environment in CGI but quickly decided this wouldn’t give the desired results within such a tight deadline and explored alternative production methods. The solution was to photograph and film outdoor foliage to use for both the print and animation. Alex continues, “This added an extra weight of realism as you have photographic filmed movement that is reacting correctly with the lens. With all of our services held in-house, we have the flexibility to adapt to technical constraints or unforeseen situations.”

Having CGI, retouching, photography and live-action services under one roof allows us to offer a broad spectrum of innovative solutions for their clients. Our ability to work equally with such diverse techniques enabled our team to deliver a dynamic and crafted range of print and motion work on Chameleon.

We were also able to re-use motion-tracked black and white video footage of the hand from the previous campaign, providing production time and budget savings for the Citrix. The re-use of digital assets is a valuable and cost-effective way for a brand to realise the full impact of any campaign. Taylor James’ ability to deliver print and motion campaigns using a cohesive digital workflow provides huge efficiencies in comparison to traditional production methods.

Handling the complete production meant they could organise and allocate resources efficiently whilst maintaining quality, providing the flexibility to push the creative and develop ideas with the agency that would otherwise have been restricted. This multi-platform campaign is a strong example of the key benefits an innovative and cross-disciplined creative production house can offer to bring a concept to life.

See the full project at www.taylorjames.com/citrix-2011

Where has Radium come from?

I founded the company in 2007 and now have a team of 12. We have a reputation around the world and as a sound design & music company, recognised and respected by big name brands and creative agencies.

What is the creed that Radium lives life by and what makes you stand out from other sound design agencies?

First and foremost, we are artists and apply our work to both not-for-profit art-based and commercial projects. Our mission is to become THE leading sound company on the planet! Our ethos is to produce the highest quality sound, no matter how big or small the project is. We are open with our clients and always share our well thought out and considered vision of their work, taking on board their needs and suggestions.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Our passion for Radium is immense- all staff are highly motivated and share the energy needed to push our craft forward. Our studio is a workshop of the latest technology amongst some more unusual sound making devices. Working with these ideas inspires and motivates us to get out of bed!

What has been the greatest achievement for Radium so far?

Our recent work with Taylor James on Rolex, as well as Ford and Mercedes; Our product design work for Bentley, Ferrari, Nokia; and sound installation work for Universal at Cannes. Along with being listed as one of the top 20 sound houses in the world by Motionographer, winning multiple awards and always creating a Hollywood standard sound for all of our clients.

What’s the wackiest method you’ve used for creating a particular sound?

Again, working on Rolex, the music score became interwoven into the sound journey. We wanted to capture the heart of the watch so we investigated how to capture the sound of sweeping movements and the coils within. Their watches are too quiet, so we found a microphone in Japan which is designed to capture the heartbeat of a snail. We applied it to the watches, which gave us a microscope into the world and sound of Rolex and its inner movements. We applied this to the ad, and you can hear the sound that has become a living soul as well as a painted picture in the mind.

Do you have a favourite source of inspiration when/if you hit a creative block?

The real world! It’s the best place to find new sounds, objects, locations, machines! They all have a unique sound which we are able to incorporate into our work.

Have you made any resolutions for 2011? Any ambitions you are burning to achieve?

Develop our new interactive department where we’ve already started to make prototypes with staff.  We will continue to grow our creative department and generally improving our craft.

We suggest that you take a look at some of the projects and intriguing ‘in-depth’ behind the scenes video’s on Radium’s website, showing that sound design is a true art: www.radium-audio.com/

Legacy is a veritable showcase of cinematic technology. In post production for a total of 68 weeks, visual effects supervisor Eric Barba is quoted as saying “yeah, it’s been a while”. Without doubt the most ambitious effect in the movie is the de-aging of Jeff Bridges character Clu – by 28 years(!), something that has never been done entirely digitally in a movie before. The process was a combination of several advanced techniques. Head-mounted HD cameras captured high-res shots of Bridges’ face when acting the scenes. Laser scans mapped every contour of his face and thousands of reference images of Bridges in his 30s from films, press and magazines all went into recreating this CG marvel. With 52 motion tracking markers on his face alone the level of detail is astounding and allowed for scenes to be filmed that would not have been possible before now.

Tron is filmed in a mix of dimensions, with scenes in the real world shot in 2D and scenes on the grid in 3D it truly utilises the technique as a means of enhancing the story rather than simply as an audience-driving tactic; a refreshing use of the extra dimension since Avatar. This is something our R&D department have been experimenting with for a while now and we hope to develop it further over the coming months.
Tron is a visual spectacle never before seen and well worth a trip to the cinema! . If you can, go the extra mile and see the 3D iMax presentation in London, for full immersion in the world of Tron. If 3D is your thing, you won’t be disappointed.

Oliver Kreylos has gone a little further than this and written software that allows his computer to read data from the Kinect. This enables him to manipulate the feeds and merge them together. The results are astounding and has really interesting potential for the future; we’ll be monitoring his progress closely. In the meantime, check out these videos and hold on to your pixels!

Remember, you can stay up to date with all of our blog posts as it happens by following us on our Facebook page!

Until then why not check out BuyPola on facebook or online or even better visit their market stall this sunday in the Brick Lane Upmarket (Christmas section) for some truly unique Christmas presents.

www.buypola.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/pages/BuyPola/177777675569927

- Idea visualisation through concept art and design development.

- Pre-production development for pitch work and treatments (research, style dev, collating reference material, building moodboards)

- Visualising scripts into storyboard formats to clearly show the key narrative of a story

- Basic editing of storyboards into 2d animatics

- Concept art for character design – that clearly illustrate actions, expressions, emotions working to directors vision.

- Concept art for Landscape and environment design.

- Create impressive  2D or 3D artwork for projects in bidding, development and in production phases.

- Working on multiple jobs at any given time.

Requirements:

- Must have excellent 2D skills and traditional art knowledge.

- An excellent understanding of anatomy, character design, colour theory, perspective, lighting, and composition.

- Modelling, shader-creation, lighting, rendering skills

- Expert knowledge of 3D Max, Zbrush, Photoshop

- Good knowledge of Vray, would be an advantage

- Experience in a node based compositing package (Digital Fusion, Shake)

- An eye for fine detail and realism

- Able to develop visual ideas for any type of creative project

This is not for the faint hearted, so if you are hard working, and want to step into a busy, creative and challenging work environment with good long term prospects, then this is the role for you! 

Please email your CV, show reel / examples of work and full contact details to: reception@taylorjames.com

Please note that candidates must be eligible to work in the UK. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer work-permission sponsorship.

After having received the original monolith models we re-developed the shader ourselves since it lacked in detailed texture and contrast. We went back to the original references and found suitable marble textures that would give the monoliths surface more interest. When lighting them we tried to pick out pings and highlights on the smooth edges so that the shapes and volumes would come through, as well as maintaining the environment’s true lighting. Experimenting with the different HDRIs also gave the objects more interest and detail.

Utilising our in-house retouch team, they were able to prepare the ‘hole’ elements to be tracked onto the ground where we then comped the monoliths into the shots. Normal passes helped us to pick out different faces of the objects and colour-correct accordingly, giving the volumes a three-dimensional quality, which it originally lacked.

Finally, The Mill sent us video elements featuring ground displacements, rolling debris and dust, which were shot on green and black screens. When added to the mountainous slopes and to the rocks within the environment they brought realistic dynamics to the shots and proved to be very useful for creating interaction between the CGI and the live action environment in an otherwise quite static scene.

Video courtesy of www.facebook.com/claremaguiremusic

An additional challenge involved designing the sculptures to fit within both a landscape and portrait composition. Working alongside our in-house retouch team, we were able to create a single very high resolution image that, thanks to great care in setting up the limitations of our frames from the start – worked for both crops. Our retouch department completed all the images working their magic to refine the raw 3D image by carefully balancing and refining tones, adding further texture, and lighting effects and generally polishing up a shine where appropriate! Our history as retouchers and our experience in handling metals, liquids and reflections combined with our relentless attention to detail helped us turn this tightly scheduled project around swiftly, whilst maintaining the uncmpromising standards we are renowned for.

Francesco Guerrera, Executive Creative Director, TBWA\Italy, said: “It has been a really complex project, which required a lot of attending and fine-tuning of KME materials and products. But the great team of professionals at TJ helped us overcome any logistical problems. We chose them, not only because we needed a good team to assist us, but also one which would bring added-value to our creative solutions. Quality is important to us, so we always look for professionals. Together with TJ we made a brilliant team.”