We got to learn more about their production pipeline, all the way from concept art to the final render. I found it interesting to learn that Pixar needed to keep their scene files as clean as possible and have a proper naming system to pass down to the other parts of the pipeline thereby making it easier for all departments involved.

I learnt that Pixar has an interesting mindset for every shot they do. They will work with the director to learn the importance of each shot before executing it. For example every shot has to have a point, and has to mean something, and not just be there to be beautiful. The animators had to understand what the director wanted the audience to feel in each shot in order to carry that feeling to its fullest potential.

All in all I had a great time and it was a fun experience. One tip that I took away from the seminar was to learn about your hero’s heroes. They stressed that there if there is an artist that inspired you to do the work that you do, he also will have an artist that inspired him. Knowing these people and learning their fundamental techniques will push you to do better work.

By Shaun Quah
3D Animator

Being a DI (Digital Intermediate) post facility, all processes within our facility revolve around a Bright Systems storage hub where the data is stored. This enables the various creative suites to actually work on the project, at the same time. In addition to that, as it is a data-centric work flow, images are preserved on the highest resolution throughout the post- production process with output to tape done only at the very end, if required. This new work flow saves time and allows for greater creative collaboration between the various departments, gearing TIGERTIGER Post with the capabilities to provide high level digital mastering services.

TigerTiger specializes in High Definition broadcast and is one of the first to embrace Hi Definition editing. Our facility is equipped with machines that can handle high definition work space. We have since become the authority in working out content for HD broadcast because having worked on these requirements, we are geared and are well versed in handling this type of workflow.
Our clients benefit from the outward appearance of being a full-service HD broadcast facility because we have the experience and tools needed to tackle the complex issues specifically related to High Definition.

You can visit www.tigertiger.tv or email either one of the following people for more information on TigerTiger HD
luffy@tigertiger.tv
annie@tigertiger.tv
nabila@tigertiger.tv

The world of television has since changed for the better as the Hi- Definition broadcasters like Astro are offering five HD channels to their subscribers- Astro SuperSport HD, ESPN HD, HBO HD, National Geographic Channel HD and HISTORY HD.
This wave will make way for an increased availability in hi-definition programming and an increasingly steady turnover to high definition television broadcasting.

It looks like the future of hi-definition broadcast will see more and more television stations installing all the hardware they need to start broadcasting high definition and more of their feeds will start to be made specifically for HD broadcast in order to give consumers a home theater experience.

Post production companies are in the midst of equipping themselves with the facilities and expertise needed in order to cater to the changing trend. Part of the process is also realizing that it doesn’t cost more to produce, but having the right equipment and workflow for the right outcome. They will be expected to understand the process and be able to work in a high resolution workspace in order to deliver the requirements of HD broadcast.

Send an email to one of the following people for more information on TigerTiger HD broadcast facility:
luffy@tigertiger.tv
annie@tigertiger.tv
nabila@tigertiger.tv

Shot and delivered over one and a half months, the breathtaking environment was created from scratch. Al explains the evolution of the commercial: “ After extensive discussions and an extremely tight deadline, what we wanted was to create a world that was surreal, one that was right next to you and you could actually live it. We tied in this powerful creative vision so that we could play on making the whole commercial more cinematic.”

TigerTiger Post had the technical know how and has been working with hi-res data format for a while now and the high powered machines could certainly handle it, so it was quite easy to take on the first HD project in the country.

A lot of care had to be taken because of the nature of HD. Astro had their own technical specifications that they had to adhere to and it was a new learning curve for all involved as they learned a whole new work flow in terms of new specifications that came with working with HD and Dolby E audio specs. However working hand-in-hand with the team at TigerTiger they were able to achieve a good working relationship, which resulted in a commercial that we are very proud to showcase.

This visually stunning spot was the initiative of a very talented team and hours upon hours of work. The task of piecing every single scene together was in itself time consuming. This was a complex process because one scene usually had 5 of more different elements or layers that were shot separately and had to be pieced together. In fact, some scenes had as many as 20 to 100 layers. Once the layers were done and the scenes were composited, it then had to be matched in terms of composition, depth of feel, color grading and speed. So what you see in a single shot actually was pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Because of the tight deadline, the online suites were on a 24 hours work call, with both online artists working around the clock. The FLAME suite didn’t stop working for 22 days. A unique schedule had to be mapped out for the work flow which involved two different teams of rotoscopers, following the schedule and handing in their shots to each of the online artists for it to work like clock work.

The animation components also had to be worked concurrently with the schedule so that the online artist would receive their components during their respective shifts. This whole process was coordinated by Producer, Tresa who had to very carefully plan the different stages of the job. She said “ the hard part is managing a lot of people in terms of letting them be as creative as possible and yet working within the timeline. You still need to keep morale high or else it could get really stressful”.

Another interesting challenge for this two and a half minute length commercial was what the online artist had to face when creating the look for each scene. Hours of research were put in to gain specific knowledge that they needed to apply to the commercial as well as get the very specific look and feel the director wanted. The directors vision, was to start the story with a sunny daylight scenario which eventually had a beautiful twilight feel at the end. What was challenging was fusing the twilight and daylight scenes. It was the first time for the artist and they put in many hours to make it perfect. However having said that, the long hours was not a factor as the team were so willing and happy to help achieve the directors vision.

Aside from the spot, the motion graphics and 3D team were also asked to create the Astro beyond logo formation at the end of the commercial. The logo was to reflect style in terms of function and seamlessness. With careful crafting the team came up with a logo that reflected brilliance and one that gave the audience a feel of the wave of the future and HD technology.

We at TigerTiger were privileged to have been able to work on this commercial as it certainly does push boundaries—with its 3D graphics and VFX. The main narrative was to transport the viewer to another world… It does that and takes us far beyond what our eyes have ever seen.

Once director Eric Yap got the brief and read the script he immediately had it in mind to do it in a single take, where they would travel through different rooms as the audience observe people moving in, but instead of the usual furniture, they were moving in objects that were symbolic references to real life apps that you can find in a 3G phone these days.

Eric decided to use sofas that were actually sim cards, Facebook made out of books, doll-sized Twitter birds that could fly like real birds, Yahoo plants and Youtube robots. He said that “once we traversed through all the rooms we would pull back to a wide shot to reveal that we were actually observing people moving into and living inside a giant hand phone as a grand finale”.

The shoot was said to be long and arduous (but fun!) process of researching and head scratching to figure out how to pull the commercial off in the time frame and resources that they had.

When asked about the details of the shoot, Eric told us that “there are many little details in the background to give the impression of circuitry imagery (wireframe furniture’s, led lamps, motherboard shelves etc) but it was important that the whole look not have a cold mechanical feel, instead to give a sense of warmth and charm that is usually not connected to high tech gadgetry”.

Eventually the set was designed and built, but not everything could be achieved live, so that’s when TigerTiger Post came in. All in all, 20% of the commercial was done in post production. At TigerTiger they worked with a combination of 3D and compositing. “Although I had grand ambitions to build the entire front of the phone as it lowered down and covered the set, sadly this was too huge an undertaking for our resources (also there wasn’t a studio or empty factory big enough!), so that part and the background at the end was achieved through CGI. The Flame operator, Hamman at TigerTiger then composited it into live footage. “What I did was that I tracked all the unstable camera movements and smoothened the whole thing out, since they achieved the whole camera move without a Motion-control rig!” said Hamman.

The whole project was a labor of love and it’s been gratifying all the bits and pieces come together, to see the end result and have such wonderful feedback.
We’re glad you like it!

Eric and his team charged into the project with unapologetic silliness, getting to the literal core of how anyone in business feels when he/she receives his/her monthly bills: shock, horror, struck dazed & confused.

Both commercials, although achieving the same aim and motive in mind, required two polar opposite methods of execution. ‘Big Phone’ was an effects-laden, post-heavy task which required multiple layers for the giant phone and falling objects to be comp-ed together seamlessly during post-production, while ‘Things That Go Bump’ had a simpler, more elegant old-school storytelling method where everything was shot in camera with no special effects. Eric would have liked to say that the main guy’s Jim Carrie-esque look of utter terror at the end had been tweaked in post to make his facials more exaggerated, but alas that was all him, the talented, talented man.

Eric is great at his craft and does everything with complete conviction, in this case it was injecting humor into the Digi commercials. He was happy with the outcome of ‘Big Phone’ & ‘Things That Go Bump’ because it was just simple ideas, which get the point across in an entertaining and memorable fashion. Eric said that the Digi Business campaign fulfilled his intense and passionate life-long dream of crushing normal-sized people with giant-sized household objects…there’s that sense of humor we were talking about.

The post production side for both of the commercials were fun and challenging. According to Senior Online Artist Haman, the process required a little more planning when it came to the ‘Big Phone’ commercial. Haman went on to say that “All the phone effects were done in post because the various elements were shot separately. The phone was shot on one plate against green matte and we had to key the phone and match the background plate.. Even the minute dust particles were shot separately against black. Therefore quite a few layers were used to comm.”

For ‘Things That Go Bump’ the online process was standard with the normal conform and touch-up but a lot of the focus was on color grading. The overall feel for the commercial the director was going for was a dark and moody tone, and our colorist Kevin had the task of trying to isolate certain elements, to make some bits like the talent and the phone bill brighter while retaining the surrounding shadowy feel.

If you haven’t caught Eric’s ‘Big Phone’ and ‘Things That Go Bump” commercials on television, we have attached them for your viewing pleasure and hope you enjoy them.

Things That Go Bump: http://tigertiger.tv/spots.php?id=26

Big Phone: http://tigertiger.tv/spots.php?id=23

Click on the link below to see our recent work:

http://tigertiger.tv/spots.php

The “Yellowman” was developed 2 years ago. It was the brainchild of Naga’s creative head, Alvin Teoh. Alvin recalls the success as being “accidental” as he didn’t expect it to be such a roaring success. “The yellowman grew and ultimately took on a life all its own. Audiences loved him and it was because of him that they started fansites and blogs expressing how impressed they were with the commercials” he said.

The creative team at Naga’s main objective was to drive this point home; “Digi is better than you think”. The campaign initially focused on Digi’s coverage but soon after turned into a Digi symbol. After the icon evolved and took on a life of it’s own they wanted to go beyond focusing on “Coverage”. It was a natural progression from there; the technological need become a human need. Alvin added that “the series of commercials evolved with emotions attached. The Yellowman then represented specific feelings, whereby his physical shape morphs into emotions of his master/ Digi customer.

The secondary objective of the Digi campaign was to entertain people seeing as how the economy is down and to put a smile on people’s faces. They injected humor and sense of value to the overall feel of the campaign ( Love, Laughter and Justice) with tag lines like “Laughter from 10sen only” makes priceless things quantifiable.

This simple, strong creative allowed Superwonderful to shape the Digi campaign and build on the already high awareness of the Digi network. The ads are definitely interesting humorous depiction of the various services Digi has to offer. The novelty ensures that they will have high recall to their existing user base . “The ideas are simple yet so sweet, lovable and most of all identifiable” said Al Isaac, Film Director at Superwonderful Films.

When the commercials were shot, it took the dedicated team at TigerTiger to make the magic happen. Hamman Roslan, the Senior Online Artiste focused on compositing and worked on elements to make all the pieces fit. He said that “Digi Love” was his favorite installment to work on but having said that it was also a lot of work as he needed to incorporate the 3D wings on the yellowman, create the bullet time effects of the arrows and had to concentrate on a lot of background replacement to make the environment look surreal. He did mention that “Digi Justice” was the most challenging as he needed to blend the yelloman’s face to the CG and then later color match it with the character, face and environment. “We also created the smoke effects on the FLAME, totally from particles and even the fire from the elements were created from scratch” he said.

We spoke to the Head of Animation, Wong Lu Kenn about the challenges of working with 3D for these commercials and this is what he said “ Creating realistic looking wings for “Love” was a challenge. We did this by creating individual feathers using fur. For “Laughter” the challenge was creating life size cats that danced to the beat of the music. Here again we had to create fur for the cats but in this one the animation was actually more fun than challenging”. For “Justice” the director wanted it to look photo real but our job was having to develop a gigantic dinosaur and shading it to match the environment then tracking the dinosaur back into the environment while at the same time tracking the live face element onto the 3D model.

Colorist, Kevin Jude worked on the 3D elements and he had to make sure that the 3D elements matched each environment . He said “There were certain parts that were challenging because of the inconsistent light source in this part of the world plus we had to make it look foreign which is always a little tricky to do”.

It took a team of people to make these Digi YCF commercials work were all well worth it as it demonstrate that you can do all the things you’ve always wanted to do with your life or business, right now. It celebrates every moment and emotions as an opportunity to do more, get more and be more.