Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/161463
Bits & Pieces Honda's Hands draws on inspiration L MPC & Modus Operandi partner on EA project L OS ANGELES — MPC's (www.moving-picture. com) New York and LA studios teamed up with agency Modus Operandi on a pair of adrenaline-pumping spots for EA Spor ts. The fullyCG pieces were used to promote the company's four spor ts franchises at the 2013 E3 conference in Los Angeles. Ignite brings together highlights from EA Sports' Madden NFL, NBA, FIFA 14 and UFC games. The spot shows new game-play features and includes 32 shots, three fully-CG environments, nearly 50 hero characters and stadium crowds. MPC NY focused its efforts on Feel the Fight, a spot dedicated to EA Sports' new UFC game. The spot focused on the electronic representations of real-life athletes. Alex Harding led the 2D team, compositing immense amounts of realistic muscle deformation, skin movement, sweat, blood, bruising and damage detail across more than 30 shots. Chris Bernier's 3D team created models and animation that held true to the fighters' real-life MMA moves and muscle anatomy. MPC's NY colorist Adrian Seery performed the overall grade, achieving true-to-life skin tones while establishing a look and feel to complement the spot's epic nature. MPC NY used Maya for CG, Nuke and Smoke for compositing, and Baselight for color correction. MPC LA called on Motion Builder to work with existing mocap, as well as Photoshop and Mari for the environments. Massive was used to create crowds and Maya was used for animation. Nuke handled primary compositing and Flame was used for final compositing and color correction. Mischa "Book" Chillak and The Greater Goods Co. created the music for Ignite. Echolab handled the Feel the Fight track. Lipsync names new head of VFX L ONDON — LipSync Post (www.lipsyncpost.co.uk) has appointed Sal Umerji head of visual effects production. He joins the studio after seven years at Molinare, where he held the role of VFX head of production. During that time, Umerji worked on over 50 films and TV productions, including the Oscar-winning The King's Speech and the BAFTA-winning stereoscopic documentary Flying Monsters by David Attenborough. Prior to his time at Molinare, Umerji spent six years at MPC, working on a wide range of VFX productions, from high-end commercials and long-form projects to feature films, including Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. LipSync Post is currently working on the films A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman; Turner, directed by Mike Leigh; and Anomaly, directed by Noel Clarke. It's current television projects include BBC2's Great Train Robbery films. 6 Post • August 2013 www.postmagazine.com ONDON — Nexus Productions and Analog (http://analogstudio.co.uk) have teamed up to create a new two-minute spot for Honda that shows how the company finds inspiration and develops its wide range of products. Wieden + Kennedy conceived the Hands spot, which has been a viral hit. The project was directed by Smith & Foulkes at Nexus, and revolves around a pair of hands that are working at a drafting table. Using a series of twists, turns and pulls, the hands craft a bolt into different Honda products, including motorbikes, a leaf blower, a lawn mower, an ATV and even a jet. The goal was to create a magical look that stayed away from the choppiness of stop motion. A live-action animatic was planned using simple wooden models and a video camera. The positions of hands at the beginning and end of each shot were worked out, as was the idea of how the transition from one vehicle to the next would be accomplished. Once this edit was ready, the stand-in models for the shoot were built and rigged. Each movement of the hand was locked once it was in the edit, so it was important for the rigging of the models to be accurate. The shoot used real models all the way through to keep a feeling of weight. All 25 of the models were then created in Autodesk's 3DS Max and Maya by Nexus and Analog from references sent by Honda. Analog then took on the assembly of the multiple shots, removing props, tracking objects, shading, lighting and rendering.The studio also handled compositing and grading. Nexus provided character animation and the subtle secondary movement of the objects. The soundscape was created by Factory, with music by Siren.