Newbury, Calif. - Maxon Computer, a developer of
professional 3D modeling, painting, animation, and rendering solutions,
announced that Monkeyhead, a Culver City, Calif.-based motion design
studio, leveraged Maxon’s Cinema 4D 3D software application.
Monkeyhead, specializing in commercial spots, broadcast show packages,
branded entertainment, movie/TV titles, and visual effects sequences,
used Cinema 4D to create a motion graphics-intensive, 30-second teaser
graphic spot and an entire promo graphic package for HBO’s “The 25th
Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.”
The promos are airing on HBO and show viewers the names of the legendary rock stars that will be performing during the concert special and demonstrate the advanced functionality in Cinema 4D with a composite of stylized, 3D photo real images that convey the massive scale of the all-star line-up.
The promos are available online at: http://www.monkeyhead.tv/project.php?project=25th+Anniv+Concert.
The 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame Concert airs as a four-hour special and features performances from musical legends Aretha Franklin, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, Sting, Simon & Garfunkel, Jeff Beck, and many others.
Josh Sahley, founder and creative director at Monkeyhead, commented that HBO tasked the studio with creating promos that would amplify viewer interest in one of the greatest concert gatherings of the world’s most exalted rock stars ever assembled -- many of them Hall of Fame inductees. HBO also informed Sahley that the use of existing photographs, video footage or music cues of any of the performers was not permissible. The studio was given three weeks to complete the project.
“Monkeyhead was thrilled to take on the creative challenge of emphasizing the individual talents of so many of the world’s greatest rock icons in a fresh and innovative way without relying on existing footage or music. We came up with the idea of finding one instrument-related image that personified each artist as a springboard to create a motion graphics treatment,” explains Sahley. “Cinema 4D is our core 3D software package and was used throughout every aspect of the campaign’s content creation process. We especially appreciate its ease-of-use for meeting a wide range of motion graphics needs -- from photo real product and location projects to kid-friendly toon shaded designs. We knew we could rely on the MoGraph and NetRender modules for the Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Concerts, and did so, pushing both to the maximum since they make typically complicated procedures simple and stress-free while providing us with endless creative and time-saving options.”
“We are delighted that Cinema 4D played a central role in providing Monkeyhead with flexible and reliable tools to bring its creative vision to this extraordinarily high profile project to life,” says Paul Babb, president and CEO, Maxon US. “The team at Monkeyhead continues to push the creative boundaries of the software in new directions even when they are working against tight deadlines challenges -- a testament to the power and stability of our software.”
The creative team at Monkeyhead began the creative process by doing research on each of the performers to identify appropriate images and work up storyboard concepts. They then “jumped into” Cinema 4D to explore camera moves and model all the instruments.
“We decided to build all the models as photo-real 3D images in Cinema 4D to realistically and meticulously capture the unique characteristics of each artist ranging from Aretha Franklin’s vintage vocal microphones, the beat-up grain pattern on Bruce ‘The Boss’ Springsteen’s wood Telecaster guitar, U2’s drum set layout, a piano keyboard to represent Stevie Wonder, and much more. In addition, we created a graphic ‘expression mark’ to punctuate the explosive line-up represented by a photo-real guitar bursting into flames.
“The functionality in the MoGraph module offers an incredibly dynamic range of tools to create motion graphics and advanced features like global illumination and caustics further allowed us to achieve the desired degree of realism. When we showed HBO the final spot they asked which images we created and which ones were pulled from existing sources because they couldn’t believe the photo-realistic quality we had accomplished,” adds Sahley.
Once the look and feel of the shots were established, Monkeyhead dropped them into Cinema 4D’s NET Render for multi-pass rendering on 8-core Mac Pro’s and 8-core Mac’s dual-booted with PC, and then brought them into Adobe After Effects for final compositing. This process was repeated for each musical element. “Unlike other packages that claim they have networked rendering, Cinema 4D’s NET Render was extremely simple to set up and gave us enhanced flexibility and creative control to experiment with transitions and to achieve a stylized, 3D photorealistic film-like look. This, coupled with its seamless integration into other third party apps was also a big part of the reason we were able to complete the project within the short deadline.”
Monkeyhead has used Cinema 4D to complete several other notable projects, including design oriented work for Red Bull, photo real commercial work for Ghiradelli and photo-real special effects in the theatrically released Eschelon Conspiracy.