Eye Candy Animation

Eye Candy & Bearcage Grapevine TVC shortlisted for AEAF Awards

10th December, 2005

Eye Candy has recently been shortlisted for the third year running in the highly prestigious Australian Effects and Animation Festival Awards. This year’s shortlisting is for Eye Candy’s work on a 30 second advertisement for TransACT and ActewAGL to launch their ISP, Grapevine. Which was created working closely with ZOO and Bearcage Productions.

The international awards, which are the only ones of their kind in Australia, highlight excellence in animation and effects and have entrants ranging from major motion picture studios to student work.

Other companies shortlisted alongside Eye Candy include the Oscar and BAFTA winning Animal Logic (of “Lord of the Rings”, “Matrix” and “Moulin Rouge”); Oscar, BAFTA and Emmy award winning, Framestore (of “Walking with Dinosaurs” and “Harry Potter”); and Digital Pictures/Iloura (of “Holden Monaro - Game Over” and “Visa Piggybank” TVC’s).

The task was to design an animated television commercial following the newly created brand, using mood frames supplied by ZOO’s graphic designers.

The solution was a completely computer generated advertisement that features the particles that make up the logo zooming around denoting the blistering speed and large download capacity of Grapevine. One of the technical challenges was the production of the unique ‘one shot’ fluid animation in a visual style similar to a ‘zero-g liquid jelly’. Gravity was applied the various elements to make it look more realistic and provided flexibility to automate the fluid movement. A secondary animation control was layered over this to give a subtle overshoot of secondary motion.

The final render of the animation consisted of a volumetrically lit translucent shader to achieve a mix between jelly and mercury, creating a look to the globs that was both simplistic in design yet rich in appearance.