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2010/09/05
2010/09/04
ALIENATED.
Check out this short animation movie that Alejandro Garcia and I did as a personal project ! (click here for HD)
"Alienated" : "the state of being withdrawn or isolated from the objective world, as through indifference or disaffection."
2010/09/01

BRIDGESTONE - ARMADILLO
For the new commercial for the new Ecopia Tire, I was asked to do an Armadillo and a CG Tire as the main characters. The commercial tells the story of an Armadillo who wants to play with a Tire, but can't keep up with the sharp curves and the bumpy road.
Click HERE to see the final video (opens in a new window).
2010/05/23

PANDA - CADBURY GEMS SURPRISE
This TVC was done with the Indian director Vishal Mangalorkar, and was on air in India. In this TVC two Pandas are eating Cadbury Gems under a tree. They soon discover that the Gems ball are not only containing sweets but also include some Ben 10 plastic figures. This is probably the most difficult commercial I have done so far, as the artistic and technical requirements were so high !
The commercial was shot in a natural park in Khao Yai, Thailand, using a RED camera. 4 actors were playing the pandas. The heat in the costumes was so high that the actors had to be switched at the end of every shot.

Building the head of the pandas was quite difficult as there was very little reference on the internet or books. The big amount of hairs on the face made it difficult to find the exact shape of the head and skin under the hairs. At the end, the modeling was based on white polar bears - hairs are less puffy - (even if the panda isn't classified as a bear but as a family of raccoon) and skeleton references of pandas.
The director wanted the pandas to look very dumb. We went through many pre-approves with the director to make sure we found a correct look that pleased us both. Once the commercial was shot and we got the fullgrade, we had to do further adjustments on the hairs style as we had to match the costume on the footage.
The Pandas were rendered with 3d Studio Max using the default Scanline Renderer. No GI was used, just a huge amount of light projecting soft shadows. The compositing was done with After Effects. The animation was done by Alejandro Garcia.
The models were then tracked over dummy models. The dummy models were built with foam and painted in blue to be keyed and remove easily.
Here is the making of the commercial showing the different technics involved in its creation :
During the shooting I took a series of HDRI Data that was used to create both the lighting and reflections on the hairs. The pictures were taken with the custom tripod head that was build for previous projects.
The pandas had to play with Ben 10 Characters that came out of the Gems Balls. The models were based on the real toys but the modeling had to be refined because the scale was much bigger and therefore we could see more details. The rendering was done with Vray. At Digital Magic we recently made the acquisition of Vray RT which was of great help while doing the shading of the Ben 10.
The models were then tracked over dummy models. The dummy models were built with foam and painted in blue to be keyed and remove easily.
Here is the making of the commercial showing the different technics involved in its creation :
2010/02/02
2009/11/02

The new commercial for NTT Data. This time the frog is pole vaulting. The challenge in this commercial was to keep the animation as close to reality as possible. We shot references for animation with one of the best pole vaulter of south-east Asia. The references were shot with a Phantom HD at 1000 fps.
The animation was difficult because the limbs of the frog are much shorter/longer than those of a human. It was hard to keep the correct key poses done by the human reference. With hard work and perseverance, Alejandro Garcia (Senior Animator) eventually managed to find a good compromise in the animation that pleased our clients.


2009/08/10

This commercial was done for Money Partners, Japan. The shooting took place close to time square, NYC.
The main difficulty of this project was to do seven penguins singing together. The modeling and the animation were done by Alejandro Garcia, and the rendering and the fur setup by myself. Pichaya Popanyasak also helped on rendering the still frames for the print campaign.


2009/05/21

Mr woody feels dehydrated ! This is definitely the most exciting, creative, interesting and potentially award winning job I've ever done :-)
Directed by the international renowned director Bo Krabbe, bringing his own never-seen-before style supported by the creative mind of Dentsu, the Japanese/Indonesian agency.
The animation was done by Alexandro Garcia. The design, modeling/texturing tracking and compositing was done by myself.



Links :
Republic of Bo Krabbe
Dentsu
2009/03/30

I worked on Cussons with the Danish director Bo Krabbe for Mc Cann Indonesia. The shoot took place in Jakarta, Indonesia. The job was mainly designing and composing shots, doing lots of motion graphics and create a unique style.
The commercial is splitted in four parts, each one introduced by supers and numbers explaining the different products.
This job was very interesting as I could try myself at motion graphics, things that I usually never do as I'm very specialized in character animation.
The commercial is splitted in four parts, each one introduced by supers and numbers explaining the different products.
This job was very interesting as I could try myself at motion graphics, things that I usually never do as I'm very specialized in character animation.
2008/12/15

Ad for DIGITAL MAGIC / ASIA IMAGE 2009
Julien Vanhoenacker and I had to design and shoot an ad for our company. I came up with this idea : "Next time I do it with Digital Magic". This is the CG / matte painting I did in 3dsmax / photoshop. Julien and I shot all the elements in the backyard of our friend company, Cinerent. We shot all the elements on green screen. That was fun.
2008/11/28

In Japanese the word "frog" has the same sound as the word "change". In this commercial, the frog symbolizes the strength of the change that "NTT DATA" bring to Japanese companies.
Pyramid Films, a Tokyo based Agency wanted a commercial in the style of "Shera" (A commercial I did two years ago), a kind of semi-realistic cartoon design.

Most of the shots had to be full CG (picture 1 and 2), and because of the refraction / reflections, the 3d depth of field and motion blur, plus the high number of polygons, we reached the longest rendering times ever recorded in the company !

(here a picture of the underwater rig, and me, doing some tracking markers survey)

As I needed only the upper part of the scene, I took 9 shots tilted up at 8 exposures each with a Sigma 10mm lens. Julien and I wrote a script that controls the camera and takes all the dynamic range by itself ! That way we didn't have to manipulate the camera between takes, significantly reducing the possibility of shaking.

This is the making of the commercial (music from Susumu Yokota) :
2008/04/02

During the first half of 2008, I had the great opportunity to be the VFX Supervisor of all the 3d scenes of "Clive Barker's Book of Blood".
The "Book of Blood" is the latest movie from Clive Barker, this time directed by John Harrison. The horror story features a young college student who appears to be channeling messages from the dead.
I worked on this movie with a small team of 5 persons including myself. Julien Vanhoenacker and alejandro Garcia were doing the blood fountain, and Yves D'incau, Pichaya Popanyasak and myself were doing the dragonflies sequences and the clamp on the mouth. The CG process took a little less than two months.
Here is the VFX breakdown :
The "Book of Blood" is the latest movie from Clive Barker, this time directed by John Harrison. The horror story features a young college student who appears to be channeling messages from the dead.
I worked on this movie with a small team of 5 persons including myself. Julien Vanhoenacker and alejandro Garcia were doing the blood fountain, and Yves D'incau, Pichaya Popanyasak and myself were doing the dragonflies sequences and the clamp on the mouth. The CG process took a little less than two months.
Here is the VFX breakdown :
2008/01/27

A horror movie filled with visual effects and special effects. The story of a double personality troubled person. For this feature film we did more than 15 minutes of visual effects, including a 2 minutes full CG shot. Good fun.

Here is an sample of the mesh I built for the "Skinless" shot. I took several pictures of the talent, to match his morphology, then modified the mesh so it looks like a skinless model. I created a displacement map using Zbrush and then enhanced it in Photoshop.
Check the CG trailer we did for the Awards :
In february 2008, we won the oscar at Suphannahong 17th Oscar Ceremony, for the best Visual Effects of the year.
IMDB "BODY#19" entry : click here
IMDB "Suphannahong" 17th Oscar ceremony : click here
2007/12/02

A beautiful car running through an ice city, the fastest man on earth as the main talent (Liu Xiang), a kick ass director of photography plus world class directors from London.
Above : Early sketch design of the ice city
Below : Pictures of the final output : The first picture shows the car composited in the CG ice and the CG environment.
The second picture shows the car, shot static on white background in studio, running in the CG environment.
The shooting was done in Shanghai. It wasn't easy... Shot in a very big studio during three days - and almost three nights -.
There was a minimum of 50 persons on the set, due to Liu Xiang as the main talent. It was very hard to do the shooting in these conditions.
Most of the shots were shot with a static car. This way the lighting was easier to control. Later on, we had to track the car, erase the static wheels and replace them with CG rotating wheels. We also had to composite CG reflections moving on the surface of the car, to enhance the motion. Using compositing tricks and masks, we manage to completely blend the CG reflections with the car and get 32 bit reflections with all the dynamic range. This way we could get nice motion blur and depth of field.
Below : The DOP looking at the first shot of the 15s commercial (the car in the ice cube).
We did many designs, as at the beginning the director's idea was to have the car in a kind of icy cavern. The agency wasn't really going for this idea, and as the project went, the design progressively evolved to be a huge stylish titanium hangar. The main idea that kept going through the process of the commercial was "crystal sharp" or "diamond cut".
Below : Early designs of the cavern.
Even though this project was very hard and exhausting, I learn a lot with the contact of many talented people. The most interesting was to discover the DOP's techniques to light the car, that I'm now using as CG lighting technique.
The commercial as been on air during the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.
Above : Early sketch design of the ice city
Below : Pictures of the final output : The first picture shows the car composited in the CG ice and the CG environment.
The second picture shows the car, shot static on white background in studio, running in the CG environment.

There was a minimum of 50 persons on the set, due to Liu Xiang as the main talent. It was very hard to do the shooting in these conditions.
Most of the shots were shot with a static car. This way the lighting was easier to control. Later on, we had to track the car, erase the static wheels and replace them with CG rotating wheels. We also had to composite CG reflections moving on the surface of the car, to enhance the motion. Using compositing tricks and masks, we manage to completely blend the CG reflections with the car and get 32 bit reflections with all the dynamic range. This way we could get nice motion blur and depth of field.
Below : The DOP looking at the first shot of the 15s commercial (the car in the ice cube).

Below : Early designs of the cavern.

The commercial as been on air during the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.
2007/10/10
2007/02/27

M150 is an energy drink. This series of three commercials are based on the idea that with self confidence you can achieve anything.

Here a comparison between sketch design and final picture.


TAGS :
CG ENVIRONMENT,
COMMERCIAL,
DESIGN,
FULL CG,
MATTE PAINTING,
TRACKING
2006/08/27

Not changing your ceiling could become a big story ! That's the idea we had to picture in this commercial ! To do so, the two CG characters take the spectator through an incredible Shakespearean love story.

Here an example of a first linetest (left). It was definitely a wrong direction and and we decided with the director to go for a much cuter look (right) :



2006/05/28

The meat in this restaurant turns you into a real lion. This was again a very funny job to do.
There was plenty of different small jobs to be done, like enlarging the mouth of the talents, extend their teeth, and make one of them turn into a lion.
I morphed two faces together. The actor's face was modeled on computer, using photograph references taken on set. Then, this mesh was morphed into a lion. Hairs and saliva were then added. I built a special rig for the mouth and the tongue, to allow it to be scaled and to be deformed as a real lion's tongue.

Unfortunately the commercial was never displayed in Thailand, it didn't pass the censorship. It was on air in China though.
2006/02/02
2005/09/28

This Music video was a big piece of work. We had to build and composite a full CG background on 180 shots within 10 days ! Luckily we had a week to prepare some models before the CG creation.
Because the censors wouldn't allow to show the singers naked, I was in charge of modeling the 4 girls in sexy poses, to be displayed as statues. A clever way to bypass the censors.

Here is another model, displayed in the museum (which isn't one of the singers)

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