FROG - POLE VAULTING
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.

This project was also a good opportunity to test the new customized HDR rotating head we built here at DM. It is composed of a custom design tripod head, a nikon d90 and a script, written by Julien Vanhoenacker, that automaticaly sets up the exposures and fire the shutter. What came out was a full 360°x180° picture that I could use to light up the scene as well as getting the correct reflections. (picture above: I cut out the top and bottom of the picture to save up space).