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Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Creative in association withGear Seven
Group745

Glassworks Waltzes Onto the Screen with Elegant New Lycra Spot

24/09/2014
Post Production
London, UK
72
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Independent's Philippe André breaths life into new brand campaign

There is a rarefied mountain in our industry that only a few reach the summit of. “Hoover-status” is achieved when a brand becomes colloquially synonymous with its product: Hoover the noun, hoover the verb.

In the trailblazing wake of the great American Vacuum Cleaner is a wonderfully retro list of brands that have done the same: Frisbee, Q-tips, Roller-blades, Post-it. Google is the obvious modern example. Another is Lycra. 

To celebrate the fact that theirs is a product that reaches into all facets of our lives, Lycra have released this innovative campaign, created by SapientNitro, Independent Films and Glassworks.

Featuring a commercial from Philippe André, the brief was for a striking, sensual and visually breathtaking film. It was a journey that took us through experimental R&D, extensive pre-production and some pioneering CG techniques.

Philippe’s vision was for a “sculpture of movement”. Dance, at the film’s centre, is the medium through which a “3D imprint” is left in this minimal world, with the CG cloth trail suspended above the floor and in perpetual motion.

The biggest challenge facing the CG team was that the effect of clothing being emitted from the dancers needed to perfectly match the outfits at creation and be simulated straight after. With a Glassworks team on the shoot, two additional cameras were used to capture the dancers’ movements from different angles, helping us to create incredibly accurate character & camera tracks.

Florian Juri, Glasswork's CG lead, said:  “Having tracked, we marked sections on the characters’ meshes that defined the areas where the cloth would need to emit from. Using a custom simulation setup a point cloud was created, which defined the cloth’s hull for every frame of a shot. These were then converted to a single polygon mesh so we had pre-processed trail geometry for each shot and type of garment. Using ICE, we then hid geometry ‘in front’ of the character and started simulation right after a certain part of cloth got triggered. Every shot was unique and required modifications to the setup”.

The commercial’s success is in its minimalism. Elegant without feeling too CG, Philippe found a clean, natural balance, more photographic than technical. In homage to Muybridge, it is a true celebration of motion, light and colour.

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