Cinema 4D

A Little Monday Fun.

About 15 years ago I worked in the marketing and design department for a large midwestern based bank. Like most financial institutions, the marketing materials were conservative, and not very adventurous which was driven partly by corporate policy, and partly because the people running the department weren’t exactly visionaries in terms of design, advertising, and branding. That’s why when I saw the video below for Comdirect Bank I started grinning from ear to ear. There is no way this would have flown at my former employer, even if it is a spot aimed at recruiting UI designers. If this had been executed at my former job, by the time the committee running the project got done with it, and a thousand people hand commented or asked for changes this spot would have been a talking head in a yellow shirt giving a 15-second pitch. A pitch that probably would have appealed to an accountant, not a UI designer. Watch the video. It has no editorial, no voice over, just some really nice animation that was built using Cinema 4D, and it works. I tried to find additional parts of the complete campaign but came up with nothing. If I find additional images or a specific site, I’ll post an update.

We were honored being asked by the German bank, Comdirect, to create a short animation for an online campaign — aimed at attracting and recruiting UI-designers.

Our idea was to create a bunch of action-reaction based animations. The very first concept was based on the idea of pushing, shifting, scrolling and clicking various buttons triggering a diverse mix of animations. We then worked up different metaphors for dealing with money and at the same time used keywords the client had provided us. During the process, the client fell in love with all the little “reaction” stories so we ended up stitching them together to create a seamless narrative — open to interpretation and detached from conservative visualizations so often associated with banks.

The color palette is based on the new CI of Comdirect, predominantly anthracite and grayscale. Yellow acts as the highlight color with a gradient to green drawing the viewer’s attention to the stories’ heroes. The environment is based on dots, points, and circles inspired by the visual language used in the world of stock markets.

Our software package was Cinema 4D and Octane renderer. The edit and compositing were done in Adobe Premiere and After Effects.

Paypal Cut Paper 3D Animation.

The video below from Sehsucht is one of those great examples of where technology and craft come together to create something that makes you question if it is 3D animation, stop motion, or a blend of the two. It turns out it was all done on the computer, but the effect is fantastic. Botht the finished video, and the making of are below showing you how it was done. The finished video looks like animated cut paper and is surprisingly convincing as something that was done with physical materials by hand. The animation was built using Cinema 4D and if you watch the making of video you can see how the team developed the sequence from storyboards, to style frames, to some intense animation sequences that capture the look of layered paper cutouts. Great stuff.

“PayPal isn’t just an online payment method, it is a licensed bank as well. Die Botschaft and SEHSUCHT Berlin developed a nice concept to communicate this and other facts about PayPal. Our main Character Mr. PayPal is explaining that PayPal is more than just a bank and shows the benefits of using it. We really had fun bringing him to live in this beautiful 3D paper cut world. The goal was to animate everything exactly like it would be done if animated by hand with stop motion techniques. This was a tedious and mind-bending challenge, but fun and every frame was worth the love and passion.”

ManvsMachine “Versus” and The Making Of with Cinema 4D.

I am a huge fan of Cinema 4D, and it is pretty insane just how much the tool has grown with each new generation. I mean if you think about it, When Cinema 4D was released in 1993 for the Amiga it was a solid tool, but there is no way the software on an Amiga system could have produced anything like what is in the video below. Frankly, there were no real desktop tools that could have produced this, which just goes to show how far computer graphics have come, and how we take their power for granted most of the time. I have been working with graphic design, animation, and editing software for more than 20 years, and if someone had asked me to produce this back in 93 I would have laughed.

This video was created by ManvsMachine to showcase the new tools and functionality in Maxon’s latest release of Cinema4D. “Versus” is a CG short inspired by the dualities suggested in the studio’s own name. This is a visual stunner that not only features great CG animation, but some really solid sound design which helped inspire the video. If you have them, put on your headphones. If you don’t turn up the sound on your speakers. I’ve also include the making of video to show you how it was done.

The MIll, “D&AD 2014 Title Sequence”.

Over the last two decades, the quality of desktop created 3D animation and CGI work has grown by leaps and bounds. The animation below was created by the Mill for D&AD’s opening title sequence. It was built in Cinema 4D, utilizing physics simulation and manual animation methods to achieve the working components of the rube Goldberg Machines. Not only was it created using desktop software, it was done with a small crew of animators and editors, which is another tribute to just how far computer generated design has come in the last couple of decades. This is really nice work with solid editing, sound s=design and animated sequences tying it all together. For full details on the process of how this was made, click the link above.

Design & Animation Studio: Mill+
Executive Producer: Luke Colson
Producer: Oana Anghel
Design Director: Nils Kloth, Douglas Bowden
Senior Art Director: Douglas Bowden
3D Lead: Oliver Harris
3D Artist: Matt Whitewood
2D Artist: Nils Kloth
Audio Track: Angell Sound