The Outpost
Creative visual effects
and animation
and animation
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Ready, set, go!
The Client and their Vision
Bureau Loos was looking for a one stop shop to partner up with on their new project, a brand spanking new campaign for Smith and Zoon’s product reveal: “Zeology”. The product, a novel way of tanning, is a truly sustainable alternative to existing tanning agents which is zeolite-based and chrome-free, heavy metal-free and aldehyde-free. This makes it far more sustainable and better for the environment compared to it’s competitors.
The desired look and feel for the campaign needed to be raw and natural. It targets factories and professionals in the tanning-field, while also meant to trigger the curiosity of fashion labels. At the core of this project lies a film showing the origins and inner workings of the tanning process. The challenge was to simplify the explanation of a fairly complicated chemical process, keeping the appeal towards the less technical oriented audience, while still providing enough details to the industry insiders. This film and the assets created for it was then used to flesh out a large number of deliverables, from digital assets, instructional videos and a print campaign.
We asked our friend Rogier Hendriks to write and direct the film for us. He condensed the enormous mount of information down into a robust script which set us on a several month long journey…
Approach
Creating a Concept with a Vision
The concept required the creation of several unique, completely CG environments. Ranging from a sprawling Icelandic landscape, to a picturesque and vivid forest scene, to a vast ocean view. The story would be presented by an actor who travels these natural environments while explaining the tanning process. This is accompanied by animated visual effects visualizing the functionality of the Zeolite.
Making it Visual
Concept Art
The first step was to establish what the environments would look like. To tackle this, we started out with concept art. Collaborating with the client and the director, our art director was able to bring together the initial visuals that everyone stood behind and got exited about. Starting with concept art comes with a very fast feedback loop, making it easy to iterate quickly.
Styleframes
Next we explored ways of translating the look and feel of the concept art into CGI. For every scene and prop we create a style frame that show exactly how it will look like in the final film.
Here are a few examples of the look development process.
Look Development
Every element goes trough several iterations until everyone if happy!
(Pre) Production
While the post-production guys are going full steam ahead, our production team starts prepping the shoot. The decision was made to go full 180 degree green screen. This meant that our talent had little to work work on set, except for some props and eye line references.
Thanks to an amazing crew, production team and VFX supervision it was a smooth ride.
Breakdown
Post Production
Creating the sprawling CG environments was both a artistic and technical challenge for our post production team. A huge of 3D models were sculpted, textured and shaded and placed into the scenes. The lighting guys did a crack job setting the right tone and the compositors brought it all together into a polished package.
Start to Finish
Testimonial
“It was a real pleasure working together with this team. Moreover, they really took the concept of the film to the next level! The result is really great and even better than we imagined."
Kees Albers - creative director
Bureauloos
Credits
Client
Smit & Zoon
Agency
Bureau Loos
Production
The Outpost
CGI & Post-production
The Outpost
Director
Rogier Hendriks
Art Director
Olivier Ballast
Colorist
Koen de Mol
Concept Art
Rocky Schouten
Music & Sound Design
Foxhole Music
Next project
Say hi to Rick!
VFX Producer and Founding Partner