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postings ROCK MONSTER A UCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND — The bass- and drum-heavy soul band Shapeshifter called on animation house Cirkus (www.cirkus.co.nz), here, to create a music video for the band’s Twin Galaxies track. The cut is off Shapeshifter’s “The System is a Vampire” album and is told, visually, through the use of photoreal animation. In the video, a rock creature is feeling the effects of urban development, as hu- mans have turned his mountain home into a ski area. He seeks his own space, fi- nally selecting the ocean, where his rock figure transforms into a unique island. The video was created by Matt “Monkey” Pitt and represents his first fully ani- mated project. Pitt was aided by Phil “Freak” James, Matt “Illusionist” Tan and Timo “Trapesist” Lenton. Twin Galaxiesis the culmination of 3D character anima- tion, matte paintings and live-action plates. The studio used Maya, Z-Brush and After Effects to complete the nearly five-minute video. STATS FOR SAVINGS S ANTA MONICA— Arsenal FX (www.arsenalfx.tv) helped pull off a series of invisible effects for a new baseball-themed State Farm spot. National Pas- timeis a :60 commercial that shows how sports fans love their statistics and how State Farm offers all sorts of sav- ings that create impressive stats, just like a favorite team. Draft FCB conceived the project, which was directed by James Gartner. The commercial follows the State Farm spokesman through a baseball stadium, where he hears fans comparing stats realized via their State Farm savings. He eventually makes his way to his seat, ending with a panoramic shot that shows a full stadium. Arsenal FX added enough CG Massive agents to fill the stadium, which was actually only occupied by a handful of people. Six artists spent nearly a month working to pull off the effect. The studio used Flame for compositing, Maya for 3D and Massive’s crowd duplication software. Maxon’s Cinema 4D was used for texturing the “agents” and Adobe After Effects was used to create the graphic bubbles reveal- ing the stats. Boujou was used for tracking. Panoramas were captured using a Canon 5D, and were adjusted in Flame. The Arsenal FX team included Terry Silberman, Joseph Grosso, Philipp Hartmann, Katja Frederkiel and Ed Raeker. SALT’S DUALITY S ANTA MONICA— The main and end ti- tles featured in the Columbia Pictures’ action/thriller, Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, were created by Nina Saxon Design (www.ni- nasaxondesign.com). According to director Phillip Noyce, the titles were used to express the duality of the film’s main character in a bold and graphic style that sets the tone for what’s to come. For the main title, the studio used Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects and Apple Final Cut Pro. All elements were rendered on the Mac at 4K for film and 2K for home video, with final files supplied on drives to Color- works at Sony to be cut into film, home video and Russian film versions. For the rest of the credits, Illustrator and After Effects were used to create the type over black that was inter-cut with picture. The project marks Nina Saxon’s 500th to date since setting up shop back in 1981. The studio is also working on the upcoming Johnny Depp film, The Rum Diary. THE EMPEROR HAS CLOTHES N EW YORK— Nice Shoes (www.niceshoes.com) provided visual effects for a :90 video hyping the re- lease of Kanye West’s new single Power. Stink London called on the studio to collaborate with them on the post and VFX. The video collage premiered on MTV in August. The Nice Shoes team spent a month compositing over 400 layers in Flame to depict West as a doomed emperor who presides over a sensual, yet apocalyptic spectacle. Marco Brambilla filmed West, along with numerous nude models, individually against a greenscreen. Nice Shoes worked with Brambilla to further develop the look of the multi-layered moving painting by compositing the figures and camera-moves. Creative director Aron Baxter and the Nice Shoes team intro- duced chiaroscuro lighting throughout the piece to create an increased sense of depth and emotion. MTV offered a broadcast debut opportunity which lead to the need for a clean version, so Brambilla and the studio devised ways of creatively covering up the models by draping them with jewelry and flowing fabric. Colorist Ron Sudul worked closely with the VFX team to hone and tweak the color grade in realtime using a Baselight system. VFX were executed using multiple Flames and 3D workstations. www.postmagazine.com September 2010 • Post 43