Snickers Commercials Russia - Snickersni!

[JoPPa]

Fantastic work. Congratulations to you and your team.

[marciowski]

HOLY MOTHER! :eek:

This is something, man! The Soccer one is outstanding!

I bet a Chocolate that it will be FP.

Congratulations to all involved.

Cheers

[Conkrys]

THAT WAS INSANE!!! Excellent work... what else to say? 5*****

[DaGor]

hey! realy love it!!!
what about third company with Rugby football on aircraft scrap yard?

[RobertoOrtiz]

Great work!

Plugged!
-R

[ivanisavich]

:eek:!!!

Let me repeat....

:eek:!!!

[Aneks]

looks fantastic in the stills. I can't seem to get the links to work. anyone else having problems ?

[cblazer]

The above links don't work :wise:

[Alex Kiesl]

First of all thanks for the positive feedback! These spots
have been really fun to work on! The client and the agency
put a lot of trust in us when we said that we do not want
to film it but to do everything full CG... and I'd say it worked
out quite well :).

The links work when I click them, but I'll double-check when
I'm in the office!

Yes, we just finished a third spot with some Rhinos and Buffalos
playing football on an aircraft boneyard. It will be posted soon,
but we're still working on the last shot of the 40 second version
for the cinemas.

[criticalmechanism]

please put some mirrors, the links don't work anymore. Maybe rapidshare ??!

[jigu]

fantastic! football one is great! :thumbsup:

[RockinAkin]

Holy crap mang! That right there is some kickass VFX work.
Great bit at the end of the making-of too. :thumbsup:

[nachione]

i cant open links. it seems there is a problem with server.can you upload somewhere else?
thanks

[Bodhisattva]

The links not work :(

[AkinYaman]

hot job, looks great

[Izuael]

Awesome work. :)

Links didn't work for me either at first, then I tried some moments later and it worked.

[s-rajesh78]

this is totally cool.. 5 stars from me too..
Congratulations to the entire team !!

the links are working for me, though only as a single stream download in flashget,( no resume support)

[Alex Kiesl]

Our Server crashed... our whole website is down. We try to upload it onto another website
and I'll post the new links asap! Sorry!

*update*
our website is up again... the links are working again. But nevertheless I'll put some
alternative links there soon!

[avinashlobo]

Heh. Thanks for the little suprise at the end of the Making Of. :applause:

[SBadea]

*hehee* Yeah... that was fun to do. :D

[Alex Kiesl]

We thought it would be nice to have a small "Outtake" in the end, that's why we did it ;).

One should not take himself too serious... so let's do something funny :)

[RhythmOfLine]

this is fantastic work! :thumbsup:

[theotheo]

Alex, holy shit that was inspirational , you and your team have done an amazing job. Congrats!

-the0

[Scob]

POOUUUAAAAA !

That s HUGE !!!

So great work !! :bowdown:

Congrats !

Jerome

[el_diablo]

Man...I was just watching this on TV last night, thinking, this is really nice work. I thought only robots were CG...

Really awesome.

[Alex Kiesl]

Right you just got this campaign in Croatia, right? It's really cool for us to know that
these spots are now spread a little bit more :).

The whole team worked very hard for it, so thanks again for your feedback :).

[jussing]

Wow, awesome work.

There mush have been a huge amount of work in the matte paintings?

- Jonas

[zman]

:thumbsup: Excellent work !

[AdrianWilliams]

Totally Amazing!!!

[barhom]

Amazing!!!

[TP]

ohh wow, this is awesome , 5 stars :buttrock: :buttrock:

[Skt]

Superb works guys ! the 'making of ' is also great !

[Blaschke]

WOW! Awesome.
5 stars

[jtvergarav]

woooow insane cg!

the last part in the making of is the best by far! better than the ad, no joke

[ChrisGFX]

outstanding work!

Chris

[MasterZap]

R O F L at the end of the "behind the scenes" clip ;)

/Z

[AnimAmaker]

Отлично! =) так держать! 5 баллов :thumbsup:

[jussing]

R O F L at the end of the "behind the scenes" clip ;)....particularly because we've just seen that the two robots are really two teenage boys... :eek:

[vigorroeffects]

Herzlichen Glükwunsch, perfekt arbeit ____ I hope that I wrote it right:)

My friend and me saw this amazing animations at your conference at fmx and we spoked to you last day about getting study at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg and you gave us some good suggestions about it and we thank you for that. We are exchanging mails with Thomas Haegele and he strongly encourage us to study there, so, see you in Stuttgart next year.

Tschüs

[Alex Kiesl]

Hey Vigorroeffects!

Of course we remember you guys :). Hey, whenever you want to freelance in Stuttgart,
let me know! I hope you still have our contacts... if not www.unexpected.de

Your work is more than nice! It would be very cool if you would study at the Filmakademie!
If you need more tipps or help with this topic, please let me know!

[vertigo]

Wow, it's great to see so many responses! I was involved in the post-production with the particle fx animation and some minimal shading work ;-) Working on the spot was a cool experience, especially at Robosoccer, where particles are just a must! :cool: It was fun working with a lot of detail and giving every single particle a unique character touch!

Herzlichen Glükwunsch, perfekt arbeit


Hvala, kolega, hvala! Zelaja Vam uspeh s animacia i kandidatura v filmova akademia! Dobra sreca! :-)

Отлично! =) так держать! 5 баллов :thumbsup:

Спасибо, АнимАмейкер! 5 баллов? Ето как в Россия "Молодец"? ;-)

Best regards
Emil

[jappie]

omg, very nice work

[ragdoll]

lmao in the end of "the making of" was foken hilarious :applause: 10* :thumbsup:

[K0RR]

Wonderful!
I'd like to ask Emil a question about 3d enviroments: except cast shadows, did you use pre-illuminated textures taken from the shooting?
Thank you, Congratulations for the beautiful work!

[Jon-Huhn]

Are you sure you guys didn't use Maya on this instead of Max? :)

Just kidding, I'm a Max user myself! But seriously, Max often is stereotyped as being good mainly for games and architectural stuff, but not visual FX. Can you give us your take as to why your studio used Max for this project, and maybe the things it handled well and the things it didn't handle well?

Thanks so much for sharing this great work with us.

[MasterZap]

....particularly because we've just seen that the two robots are really two teenage boys... :eek:

Well, it is established one of them is a young boy. Not sure about the other one..... could be a chick... ;) I mean... purely hypothetically. . . . .

/Z

[vertigo]

Wonderful!
I'd like to ask Emil a question about 3d enviroments: except cast shadows, did you use pre-illuminated textures taken from the shooting?
Thank you, Congratulations for the beautiful work!

Ciao Corrado!

As far as I know lots of reference images (HDRI also) were created on-set during the shooting of the ad. But I am sure Alex could tell you more about this process, since he & Steffen used to be on location with their cameras :-)

Best regards
Emil

[Alex Kiesl]

Emil did a fantastic work regarding all the particles and dust effects, that is one of his
specialities and that's why we love to work together with him :).

As far as the environment and these kind of things is concerned this is something I do on
my own. The background plates are real shot footage we shot in Tucson, Arizona. We also
photographed a couple of HDRIs to get the real lighting from the scene. We 3D tracked the
scenes and modelled everything which was necessary for the interaction with our characters
(light, shadow, dust, destruction, etc). After this we camera-mapped one still of the sequence
onto the geometry (which helps to find the correct light/shadow direction) and that's pretty
much it. The texture of the environment was not self-illuminated but it helped to enhance the
bounce light colors. The only things that are self-illuminated is the plane which is pushed aside.
To get the correct light interaction we rendered an additional shadow pass.

Hope this answers your question a bit!

[Alex Kiesl]

@Jon Huhn

Why we use Max instead of Maya? That's easy: When I founded the company together with
my four other colleagues in 1999 3DS Max was our favorite package. And at that time nobody
thought about changing the package as we all loved Max and it fitted to all our needs...

As we all studied at the Filmakademie in Ludwigsburg (at the same time we build up 'unexpected')
we tried to improve our skills and I think we succeded somehow :). Meanwhile we grew to a size
of roughly 35 - 40 people and we always stayed with Max... actually there is really no reason
for changing to Maya or any other package... it's not about the software... it's about the guys
sitting in front of the monitors ;)

[Matias]

i love this work
The composition is spectacular

______________________________
www.matiasfernandez.com.ar (http://www.matiasfernandez.com.ar/)

[loocas]

Very nice work, guys! :thumbsup: and thanks for the making-of! :wavey:

Btw: http://forums.cgsociety.org/images/rating/rating_5.gif from me, no doubt! :thumbsup:

[CHRiTTeR]

hell yeah!

[jussing]

Guys, can you say something more about the matte painting / camera projection work? :)

Really appreciate it. Thanks. :) Top work, again.

- Jonas

[Pionier]

it's about the guys
sitting in front of the monitors ;)

nice sentence :thumbsup:

what a bloody good job with textures, lighting and rendering. I watched it as a modeler artist and tell my guys, what I should do with myself when I look on making-of and see all this things are a simple box... I'll lost my job soon because of your texture/shders/lighting artists hihi :scream:

amazing job!

btw, I didn't know that are a good CG company at Germany, so close to Poland :)

keep it up!

5* form me

cheers
pionier.

[avneriginal]

Brilliant work mate!
I like the pace and the feel of both clips.....incredible stuff, well done!

[webhead]

What can I say that hasn't already been said - just an outstanding job!

[burgulkut]

Great work, really dynamic.

Great composting, also.

[TrexGreg]

Despite the minor compositing issues regarding the blue screened people, these tvc are super excelent and the 3D work is TOP NOTCH! Six stars from me and very very well done!


Cheers...
T.Rex

[leishman]

wow...i like this work..but i don't know why !i can't download any files....

[bzouchir]

Absolutely fantasic!
pure talents you've got guys :)

the ending is halarious!!! :applause:

congrats :thumbsup:

[Obaid3DFX]

this is outstanding man!

I saw it in one of the channels....

great 5 stars

[Climax]

Congratulations for such a great job, Can I ask how long did you take to finish and how much did it cost?

[vaio]

Great Work

Congrats for the Animago Award !

Ronny

[comic-craig]

I remember when I was a kid- Snickers would advertise that you needed to eat them in order to handle major ski terrain. I guess in Russia Snickers helps you stay a robot. I feel like my childhood was pointless now. Great job.:)

Craig

[luketitley]

Amazing work!

[SBadea]

To say it with a female colleagues normal all day language: ROFL!
Craig, that comment of yours really made my day!
So thanks for that smile in the morning! :)

@Alom: Hey! Don't you have the version with the mustaches in Saudi Arabia? We've never seen it, just heard, that they are going to change the spot this way. We would be curious how it looks. Is there any link you can give me? We would be reeeeeaaallly curious how that one looks like!

@Leiptzscher aka vaio aka Ronny: Servus! Since youre from East-Germany, too, I'll take the opportunity to thank you in the name of the whole team for your congrats!

Greets
Sebastian

[Tritoon]

Really amazing, very nice work

Can you tell us which program did you used for compositing? :)

[Alex Kiesl]

For the compositing we used After Effects. Photoshop for all the retouches and Camera-
projection maps and for all the 3D work we used 3DS Max.

[jigu]

did you use camera map per pixel map technique or "Cameramap(WSM)" modifier?

Thanks for informations! if you can post breakdown for particularly cameramapping or how maps were made i would appreciate it.

[WhiteBlaizer]

Too many congrats ^^

[Alex Kiesl]

did you use camera map per pixel map technique or "Cameramap(WSM)"
modifier?

Thanks for informations! if you can post breakdown for particularly cameramapping or
how maps were made i would appreciate it.

We used the standard camera mapping, neither the Camera map per pixel nor the WSM modifier.
The "per pixel" did somehow never really work for us... don't ask me why but we always
had trouble with. The WSM modifier would permanently project the mapping onto the
geometry even when the camera is moving, which would be wrong. We used the regular
camera mapping modifier.

The following picture show the one of the toughest shots of all. The perspective was
so distorted we had to fake badly :). But as the shot is so fast you can't see it. So
here we go with the texture (of course with small hidden messages ;) ).

http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/alben/51/3938951/1600_3361313362313832.jpg


And here you can see the also distorted modelled setting. Well... this is an early stage with
some details missing, but that's roughly it.

http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/alben/51/3938951/1600_3263626664363562.jpg

[jigu]

Thanks for informations. They are really useful!

I hope you wouldn't mind few more questions about camera tracking : how was the shot camera tracked and in which camera tracking utility software? were they shot with freemoves or node(fixed on stand) based?and what short of problems came(if there was any) when building geometry again to match the footage after you import the tracked camera from camera tracking utility?
like i always get small scale camera(i get everything within the max grid not with correct scale) when i import it in max from boujou.

[Alex Kiesl]

Oh, I'm sorry! When I explained the whole shots a couple of answers ago I was completely
confused. I explained how we did the new spot with the planes... which will be posted soon!

Sorry again for this! All shots in both spots here are full CG... there is no such a thing as camera
tracking, etc. as everything is completely 3D. The camera is an animated "hand" camera. Sorry
again for the confusion.

But if we track footage with Syntheyes we also end up with a small scaled 3D tracking result. But
I would have to forward you to my colleague Steffen Hacker who does most of the 3D tracking
here.

[el_diablo]

I think this spot series cleary showcases how expirience and good direction are essential to making a production feasible and the result eye catching. Good concept helps too :).

A couple of questions tho:

1. How did you receive the concept (storyboard, synopsis) and how deep was it developed?
2. Who was the director (outside or inside the studio)?
3. How long was the production time?
4. How the h**l did you keep the agency at bay until you had something reasonable to how them?

About (4), when agencies order animations from me (or anything else they cant 100% envision), they call me up the next day and want something to see. I lose about 60% of time just doing previews for them...sad but true.

EDIT:
Oh, yes I forgot to answer you, the commercial is playing in Croatia for some time now. Maybe a week or two.

[Alex Kiesl]

A couple of answers :)

1. How did you receive the concept (storyboard, synopsis) and how deep was it developed?

- We recieved the board through a production company called Spyfilms from Canada. It was
a synopsis telling a very rough story. They also had a storyboard but it has almost nothing in
common with the final spot. We had to develop a story out of it and this we did with a very
detailled animatic.

2. Who was the director (outside or inside the studio)?

My colleague Steffen and me also directed this spot. This way everything came out of one
hand... the shooting, the supervision and the postproduction. I animated together with my
colleagues Sebastian Stolle and Steffen composed everything.

3. How long was the production time?

Roughly 4-5 weeks per spot.

4. How the h**l did you keep the agency at bay until you had something reasonable to how them?

I guess it has a lot to do with the preparation, communication and the schedule you develop
in the beginning of the project. The animatic was very detailled, so they could imagine quite
well how everything will look like. We explained that we will show them the major steps to
involve them in the whole process, so they knew that we show them whatever we have to
certain dates. The rest is trust I guess...

[maxspider3000]

:surprised :surprised :surprised :surprised

after watching that ... maybe all this time I was not doing any cg on my life ... it was just some scratches :banghead:

man ... I want to scream so loud ... but maybe I will just give you the full 5 stars and going to cry on my bed :cry:

thanx a lot for making us enjoy ... even if it is a pain :applause:

[AVTPro]

Love the making of. Wish major feature film DVD "making of" were as good as this one.

[m|3]

Technically Killer work! Thanks for sharing.

The Football spot reminded me of a Nike "Robots" 2d animated cell shaded spot I came across some time ago:

>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGsN0J5wQBc

[thatoneguy]

Out of curiosity why did you choose to do it all in 3D? Did you find it was cheaper? Offered more flexibility to make last minute changes? Could you talk a bit about the decision making process? Thanks.

[raffo]

simply spectacular! :applause:

[Djampa]

Oh my...

Not only SUPER great commercials, I loved the making of, and even better to read all this thread here ;)

So cool, thanks for sharing, this is a superb quality production. Congratulations!

Cheers,

[Alex Kiesl]

Out of curiosity why did you choose to do it all in 3D? Did you find it was cheaper? Offered more flexibility to make last minute changes? Could you talk a bit about the decision making process? Thanks.

There are a couple of reasons why we decided to make this a full CG production. First of all and
the most obvious factor is money. The budget did not allow at all to think about two shootings.
One always underestimates the costs that sum up... even if it is only a "plate shooting". You
need a lot of equipment (dollies, cranes, car-riggs, tons of grip, etc) and (as we just experienced
with our last shoot for Snickers again) lots of people too.

The second reason for going full 3D is, that we planned camera moves which would be difficult
to shoot (flying low on the street crossing a bus, flying high through a city, cranes moves in a
hall, flying parallel on a rooftop and so on...) and with 3D they are more or less comfortable to
create. Furthermore we wanted to have fast and rough camera-moves... and they are almost
impossible to track.

Of course changes are "easier" to do as you can create new sceneries out of some photos
but if you did not film something you can' make a new shot our of it :)

[Nucleo]

Hello guys,

This is amazing! Gongratz for a great job well planned and executed, really awesome stuff. Could you tell us a bit more about the animation part of the process like if it is mocap (spline for the spacecrafts?) or hand made and how you approached the commercial from a directors point of view? Again great stuff!

[AVTPro]

How much did it cost?

I always ask the questions noone wants to deal with. :)

[harmonic01]

That was totally wicked!!! :buttrock: Can't stop watching. It's like SW Pod Racer mixed with Transformers. Love it. :bounce:

[edit] oh and this should definitely be on the front page! (Start thinking of getting more mirrors :D)

[Alex Kiesl]

Hello guys,

This is amazing! Gongratz for a great job well planned and executed, really awesome stuff. Could you tell us a bit more about the animation part of the process like if it is mocap (spline for the spacecrafts?) or hand made and how you approached the commercial from a directors point of view? Again great stuff!

The Gliders in the "Race" Spot were hand-animated. I don't like the Spline-Animation as most
of the times you have some edges in the paths which you can't really get rid of. That's very
annoying so therefore I prefer hand-animation.

For Robosoccer we used Motion-Capture as a basis and added tons of animation layers :). So
again I would say 60% Mocap... 40% handish, but the handish parts are really important to
makes the moves really integrated in the shots and more interacitve. But maybe my colleague
Sebastian Stolle wants to add some stuff as he also animated some shots!

[SBadea]

As Alex already said, we used Mocap as a base for the "Robosoccer" animation. So, even if you have a shot with a good Mocap-base, there's some amount of work in numerous layers with offset, exaggeration of some movements to make them stronger and additional movements.

Sometimes the Mocap just gives you the basic timing for the shot. Maybe you want to do something else instead. Then you're touching the original animation, clean up to 90% of the keys out, add some layers, and in the end it gets so "alienated" that it has almost nothing to do with the animation you started with. In such cases, it is funny to see origin and final animation in comparison.

And of course, there are some shots that are complete hand animated. ;)

[maxspider3000]

this commercial is being shown here in Egypt ... and I guess in all arabian countries ...
and BTW, there isn't any changes on the shots ... it's exactly like the one I saw here ..

I can't wait to see your next one guys :applause:

[SBadea]

ah ok. So this version was just for Dubai.

Alex and Steffen have seen it before. But just a small mpeg, and I'm sort of curious how it looks. Turns out, that in the end they just changed the ethnik type of the human-character.

[rszebras]

Wow! Outstanding work! The client must have been overjoyed. I thought the way you transitioned from the live character to the cg robot was superb -- particularly in the soccer spot where the character is frozen in midair. I also thought the fast almost shaky camera movements brought me into the action -- shakes so you could sense the power of the characters running, etc., and fast zooms to keep the action moving frenetically. Thanks for sharing your work.

[Alex Kiesl]

Our heads turn red :).

Yes, you are absolutely right, the camera-work is very important in these kind of spots. As everything
is CG it was one of our main tasks to animate the camera in a way which is real but also keeps the viewers
attention to the right spots of the shots.

The client was very happy indeed and they actually are the two most succesful commercials for the
brand so far. That's why were lucky enough to work on the two new spots, which is what we are doing
at this very moment :).

[rszebras]

I'm looking forward to seeing the two new spots. Great stuff!

[jAnsen]

wow. excellent work. i can´t believe it was done in 5 weeks!

[austinkyo]

hi, it was great animation!! i can see that there is alots of photo base modelling for the enviroment, which i think is much easier if compare to video footage tracking for compositing.. hopefully you can share with us how is it actually done.. thanks..:)

[Alex Kiesl]

double posting

[Alex Kiesl]

We covered huge scenarios with our digtal SLRs and stiched them together in Photoshop. As we
planned the whole spots quite precise it was easier for us to we already knew an set what we have
to photograph from which angle to achieve this and that camera-move. After we stiched all the
photos together we modelled them from the (sometimes heavily distorted) cameraperspective in our
3D program. After that we projected the picture from camera-perspektive onto the geometry and
that's pretty much it. Of course there is a huge effort in retouching all the pictures, creating alpha
channels for things that are opaque and even more important is that you have to create pictures
for the scenario which is behind the geometry if your camera move reveals what is behind the objects
in the foreground...

It is not suitable for everything but depending on the approach it might be a very good solution.

[austinkyo]

Hi Alex, Thanks for sharing the technique, i thinks it is a brilliant technique which is productive and time saving rather then spend time to shoot the enviroment with video and then track the prespective before compositing. i hope this sharing could help many others too produce good animation using the same technique. Thanks again :thumbsup:

[RENaRt]

today I have seen the new trailer on tv -american football theme , you this did again?

[MSun]

amazing stuff, awesome work, frankly the live action part doesn't live up to the CG part, just great work!!!

[Wicked]

That was totally wicked!!! :buttrock: Can't stop watching. It's like SW Pod Racer mixed with Transformers. Love it. :bounce:

[edit] oh and this should definitely be on the front page! (Start thinking of getting more mirrors :D)

I totally agree!
And there is just so much information about the making-of etc. Bookmarked this thread! :thumbsup:

Excellent job guys!

[Traffer]

phantastic work!

[SBadea]

Thanks guys for the great response!

@RENat_ukg (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=194221): Jup, a couple of weeks ago the new snickers campaign started in russia.

[CgPilot]

Hi there,

These commercials are fantastic! I know that you used reference photos's, but i was wondering if the city, streets, etc. were modelled from an excisting city. Or did you completely designed it?

Thanks.

[SBadea]

Sorry for the late reply!
The city is Toronto in Canada. We changed backgrounds or additional buildings if necessary. But all in all it is Toronto.

NP :)
Sebastian

[hmana]

thanks for your job it's good good commercial anim

[dcmoutinho]

wow !!! :applause:
great job, congratulitons !!!

the animation of the robots it's mocap or by hand ?

[SBadea]

Thanks a lot!

The relation between Mocap (that we used mainly as a base) and additional animation is something about 60% Mocap and 40% handmade animation. As you might know, you can't just simply take the Mocap and leave it like it is. And there are some shots that don't even have a Mocap-Base and were totally handmade.

[flumpa]

Wow o.O

Keep up the good work!

[cbaristo]

amazing job guys,

i saw the rugby one from your website and it rocks too!

i have a question for you...
which is the pipeline you used to go from the still photographs to the 3d camera mapped models? software and overall technics?

thanks a lot in advance,
cbaristo.

[SBadea]

The pipeline should be described somewhere in the middle of this thread. Just look it through. Alex described it, I'm pretty sure.

We're happy you liked it! :)

[cbaristo]

ill read it again to see if i miss something!
cheers!

[WKTURNER]

That was very nicely done, great work, I love the scene at the end of the making of section, hilarious, keep up the great work!

ps this is my first comment on cgsociety so you should feel special!

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