Pig battles crayfish in Sin City-inspired spot

This spot for a Polish charity is all about the fight against cancer. "The whole idea - the scenario and the concept of the spot - was created here in Platige," says CG supervisor Kamil Pohl. "Jointly with the DDB Warsaw Agency, we came up with the idea of a fight between two arch-enemies: strong, courageous Mecha-Pig and horrible, dangerous organic Cancer."

Crayfish and cancer are homonyms in Polish, so a crayfish creature represents cancer in the spot. "From the beginning, we wanted to base the pipeline on the solutions we already know," says Pohl. "We used 3ds Max to model the characters, props and assets. We wanted to do Cancer in ZBrush but we gave up the idea. The sharp edges of its armour did not require such detailed modelling. It was faster and easier to do it by poly modelling.

"The big challenge was to create the atmosphere. We didn't want it to be hyper-realistic but we also didn't want it to be too stylised. The inspiration came while watching Sin City: the sharp contrasts, monochromatic images, edge-lit characters and conventional spaces with bricks, bright spots and floors were exactly what we needed.

"Jointly with Rafał Wojtunik, we created preliminary sketches and concepts. Later we just focused on the darkness and worked on the pitch-black places in the movie. The breakthrough came after we saw initial renders of the first shot. With the help of Photoshop, we created the atmosphere and reflections on the floor.

"We used V-Ray for final rendering. Obtaining this effect you can see in the screen was quite simple and based on preparing a few render layers for the composition. Finally Manuela Balk and Dennis Nikolayenia did their magic in Nuke. Their help in this project was invaluable."

This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 173.

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