Whimsical 3D animation is a visual delight

Multi-award winning London-based animation agency Studio AKA was approached by production company Blacklist and advertising agency Y&R to create an animated campaign for Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Almond Milk.

"We strove to create a unique world for Blue Diamond," says head of CG James Gaillard. "The process was built within a Softimage and After Effects pipeline. This is something we are very secure in applying to the work that we create as we have a lot of experience of working in this way."

"We originally imagined the spots consisting of 3D sets with 2D animated characters," Galliard continues. "However, despite very early promising tests, we opted to push for a unified 3D look. This eschewed a regular lighting and shading setup in favour of a more graphic, flattened render style. This gives the spots their unique signature look. The world and the characters have a very specific lighting and stippled shadow look. The 3D team was tasked with applying a process to create it, which had its own rules and idiosyncrasies.

"As with a lot of commercial work, the client can make a lot of requests and changes along the way. Because of this we really needed to keep a flexible pipeline and have a good structure in place for tracking changes to shots or assets. We used reference models in Softimage and this helped keep things flexible for all those client comments."

This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 174.

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