LU2ON

Creating a low poly island in C4D is a right of passage so its mad that this is the first time I was asked to do it in a professional capacity.

The job was curated by property specialist creative agency ignite TV who also happen to be friendly work neighbours.

Not only an Island

The low poly island was just one part of the job. The whole animation is 2 minutes long and designed as a mood piece for the LU2ON development.

The rotation of the island forms the homepage on the www.LU2ON.com website and sits at the end of the film. The video slips seamlessly into the website homepage rotation. Sorry, I’m not explaining this well. So, you land on the website, the whole video plays and then the 3D world keeps spinning round at the end. Easy. Well not that easy, there was some serious head scratching to make it work. Elements such as the plane, cars, balloon and people had to loop perfectly without glitch. Camera co-ordinates had to match perfectly from the end of the animation to the start of the rotation video. Clear as mud?

What is LU2ON?

It’s a crazy big residential project in sunny old Luton. It’s absolutely massive.  The development has 685 apartments, a hotel, retail & leisure space plus a conference centre.

Luton’s main selling point is its proximity to London. Whilst it is 35 miles from central London, which can take over an hour by car, Thameslink trains can bring commuters into King’s Cross in just 23 minutes.

3D mixed with 2D

Most of the animation uses 3D backgrounds combined with 2D characters, rigged & composited using After Effects. All of the 2D & 3D rigging was done by Motion graphics wizz kid Dave Ellis. Check out his stuff at www.sendmelive.co.uk

When a scene required a more ambitious and dynamic camera move, we opted for 3D rigged characters.

On the scene above, Jess’s body is created in 3D using C4D’s cell shader. Her facial rig is added in After Effects. Although the head rig is 2D it gives an illusion of being 3D.

In some sections of the film the animation was cell drawn by hand. Jess’s run cycle at the start of the film was made using this technique.