“Trophomotion” by Kleiser-Walczak
Conference:
- SIGGRAPH 1999 More animation videos from SIGGRAPH 1999:
Title:
- Trophomotion
Director(s):
Company / Institution / Agency:
- Kleiser-Walczak
Description:
Choreographing the impossible…
Two reflective gold basketball trophies come to life and play a game of one-on-one in a commercial commissioned by White Rhino Productions for STARDOX high-performance braces and supports.
Kleiser-Walczak’s Trophomotion team pre-visualized the entire spot using motion capture and a virtual set. During the table-top shoot, the previsualization and motion capture was rough composited over the live video feed to ensure the accuracy of the backplates. Keyframe character animation was used to breathe life into the trophies’ performances.
The artists at Kleiser-Walczak have been design partners in development of Alias|Wavefront’s Maya software package. The Trophomotion characters were modeled in Artisan, a compo-nent of Maya that allows artists to sculpt forms intuitively, using tools similar to those used by traditional sculptors. Maya was also used for 3D modeling of CG environments, animation, and lighting. A new scripting language called MEL or Maya Embedded Language was used to blend keyframe animation with performance-capture data. Compositing was executed with Maya Composer. The Alias|Wavefront software was used on SGI Octane and O2 workstations. Final rendering utilized the Kleiser-Walczak render farm, composed of multiple SGI Origin 2000 servers.
Hardware:
SGI Octane and O2 workstations, multiple SGI Origin 2000 servers
Software:
Maya Composer, Alias|Wavefront
Additional Contributors:
Kleiser-Walczak Crew:
Co-Directors: Jeff Kleiser, Diana Walczak
Executive Producer: Wendy Gipp
Line Producer Live Action: Sue Tiezzi
Line Producer CG: Patrick Mooney
Visual Effects Supervisor: Frank Vitz
Art Director: Kent Mikalsen
Production Manager: Tom Hendrickson
Production Coordinator: Molly Windover
Animation Supervisor: Jeff Lew
Lighting Supervisors: Scott Palleiko, Jerry Brown
CG Supervisor: Derald Hunt
Technical Supervisor: Daniel Roizman
Animators: Michael Clausen, Wayn Goodman, Chris Swing
Compositor: Ray Haleblian
Motion Capture Specialist: Dean Wormell
Director of Photography: Buddy Squires
Gaffer: Ned Halleck
Camera Assistant: Mark Hirshfeld
White Rhino Team:
Creative Director/Producer: Dan Greenwald
Co-Producer: Tom Ryder
Copywriters: Jim Call, Peter Pappas
Music: Sound Techniques, Inc.
Voice Over: John Laurenti
Tru-Fit Team:
President: Louis Caprio
Marketing Director: Al Petrilli
Worldwide Marketing Director: Andy Childs
