London studio Nexus recently created ‘This Unpredictable Life’, an rousing animated piece for Honda Jazz that shows life as an unknowable journey.
The spot was directed by Smith & Foulkes for agency Wieden and Kennedy London. It begins with a giant shoal of babies, and then follows just one person through the trials and tribulations of childhood, teens and adulthood, falling in love and having a family, before the arrival of the Honda Jazz itself.
Ben Cowell, head of 3D at Nexus, said: “From my very first discussions about the ambitions for this project it was clear that it would be one of the biggest challenges we have faced at Nexus. When describing the vision for the environments the phrase ‘Painting with Particles’ was used on more than one occasion, often in conjunction with the word ‘epic’. Every project raises the bar for the studio; in this case we would be creating 60 seconds of epic volumetric environments rendered in HD and all of which had to be believably 3D. The studio pulled together and we are really happy with the final result.”
Directors Smith & Foulkes added: “Visually, we wanted our hero to be a very simply designed character contrasting with a highly complex world. We used layers of particles to immerse him in a mysterious dreamlike space. Our 3D team were somewhat annoyed when they realised just how much of their painstaking background work ended up completely shrouded in a mysterious dreamlike space. But its nice to know its there.”
Credit List
Agency: Wieden and Kennedy London
Creative Directors: Sam Heath, Chris Groom
Agency Producer: James Guy
Production Company: Nexus
Directors: Smith & Foulkes
Nexus ECD: Chris O Reilly
Exec Producer: Julia Parfitt
Producer: Tracey Cooper
CG Supervisor: Ben Cowell
Animation: Nexus
Production Manager: Jo Bierton
Compositing: Time Based ArtsSound Design: Aaron Reynolds @ Wave
Music: Bruno Coulais
3D Animation: Michael Greenwood, Mark Davies, Eoin Coughlan, Keith Ribbon, Alberto Lara, Stuart Doig, Reece Millidge, Antoine Bourruel, Welles BussettConcept Artist: Ronald Kurniwan
Further Design: Blind Salida, Chris Martin
3D Modelling: Matt Clark, James Hardingham, Dan Crossland, Ben Merrick, Andrew Hickinbottom, Dara Cazamea
Matte Painting: Geoffroi Ridel, Florian Casper
Lighting and Rendering: Michael Greenwood, Mark Davies, Matt Clark, Jay Harwood, Jerome Haupert, Richard Moss, Wayne Kresil, Anthony Arnoux, Ben Blundell
VFX TD: Ludovik Boden, Rodi Kaya, Michal Firkowski, Richard Moss, Mattias Muller, Hristo Velev
Rigging: Iker J de los Mozos
Pipeline TD: Mark Tsang
Studio Systems Support: Patrick Hearn
Render Support: Callum Welsh