In late '19 we set out to create a full CG 30 sec ad and pitch to a company we had never talked to before. Little did we know, it would pay off!
A collaborative project between designers Aaron Bookout and Cody Garrow (Knitted City). Every once in a while you find a project worth taking on some amount of risk for. That's what happened to us when we took on the pitch to Our Place. Our Place is a young, inspiring cookware company with an ethical mission that we can stand behind. In a remarkably short amount of time, they have been taking the cookware world by storm. With an Instagram following of around 20k when we started this project, to now nearing 80k; this brand has been exploding in popularity. With an ever growing audience and a wider range of customers to reach, we stepped in at the perfect time to help out.
From initial concepts all the way to final export, this project took us two months worth of hard work and moonlighting. We started by collecting mood board styles/textures/feels, we then sketched out a quick storyboard of the entire spot. We proceeded to craft an animatic for each scene, using blocked in 3D scenes and animation. Next came modeling, texturing, building out our scenes, setting up lights, cameras and refining animation. The shots ranged from 1-10 seconds long and took anywhere from 3-16 hrs per shot to render out! Once the first round of renders were complete we moved into compositing, while simultaneously re-rendering any shots that we wanted to update.
Hours of thought went into making sure that our personalities and creative styles didn't overpower what we had learned about their brand. The fact that we went into this project blindly, without any direction, led to some knotty situations. Often, the best way to highlight a product is to surround the product with other items that have a similar personality, but this is subjective territory. There's no guarantee that our interpretation will match theirs. The best remedy we found was to use their other products as a design language.
Pitch Process
In late April, we sent the pitch email, which included a link to watch the ad along with our reasons for selecting Our Place. Within ten minutes of sending, we received an email with praises and a request to set up a meeting. After a couple of calls and swapping emails, we landed a deal!
Animation Process
This project was created using Maya, Blender, Cinema 4D and rendered with Redshift, Cycles, and Octane.
Free Gift To You
Thank you for looking through our project, we hope you enjoyed your time here! As a parting gift, we have included a free Abstract Metal Grate 3D Model to use in your own projects (personal and commercial). Download through the Gumroad link HERE.
