Making of Bionicle Vakhi printed in 3D World

I found this scan of an article posted by 3D World a while back about the making of the LEGO Bionicle Vakhi TV commercial I worked on whilst employed by VFX house Ghost (Copenhagen). Good memories. I worked on the look and compositing of the whole project but also did some misc 3D (modelling, shading, lighting).

My favourite shot was the last one where they all appear through the fog. Later on I graded the shot for a Bionicle music video (which was great fun too). Unfortunately for unknown reasons the music video was uploaded ungraded and made officiel even though I had graded the whole thing. What a shame.

Toyota RAV4 in Free Format

Here is a video from a CGI project I had a major role in at Storm Productions. The end result was fantastic to experience in real life. There was a stand in the Copenhagen Airport in 2006 where the company Vizoo had an installation with a real life size car projected onto a "transparant" screen. I had never worked with Free Format before. I don't think a lot of people had at that time.

It was tricky to do the video because the car had to drive somewhere but it couldn't be in another environment because it was inside the installation box at the airport. So I came up with the idea of making animated HDR images showing the environment more clearly as it the car moves along. I think it works very well. It also needed to align perfectly compared to the viewing angle of the people passing by. It was very interesting to work with. I hope they had uploaded a better quality video by I guess we have to make to with what we have.

Just to mention again, this video was to be experienced in real life, and it was a fantastic pay off to get to the airport and see the final result. I hope the video shows the idea of how it was to see.

Crowd Control in french VFX showreel

Here is a showreel by a friend of mine from France, Manuel Souillac. I had great fun working with him on The Ugly Duckling and ME. He surprised me recently by adding one of Crowd Control's tracks to his new reel. I think it kicks ass! Well done, Manu'!

Space Cadet's Laureline et Valerian reel

Here is a video I made with my brother Jesper Banner back in 2001. It was hastly done in less than a month. We made the music and added sound FX. Thinking about what we can do today it isn't much but it was fun to do. It is losely based on Laureline et Valerian (the french sci fi comic book).

ERGO Direkt

Last year (2011) I worked on a German TV commercial at Gungho VFX. They created some terrific CG elements and I got the job of compositing some of the shots. All of the shots were collaborative so I can not take sole credit for them. Either way I am pretty proud of what I and the other guys did so here are some pics and the video.

Old CGI stuff from 2001

Going through my library of old cgi pics I have done I found several head of head shaking quality and a couple of pics that actually has some good qualities.

This one is from 2001 and I actually don't think I have composited it more than the Effects panel allowed me in 3DSMax R4. It was never used but made in connection with a project called Laureline é Valerian (based on the famous french comic book).

The second one is a simple picture with the Centauri cruisers in close formation. I like the grey backround and the lighting. I believe this is also from around 2001,  maybe earlier.

The third picture is a spaceship which I designed and built and is rather funky to look at. Not very detailed but I like the fattyness of its shape. What the picture doesn't show is the many thrusters on its backside that has a nice orange glow. Reminds me of a ship from the show Farscape. This is also from around 2001.



Beat the Speed of Light

This is a front cover the Crowd Control band members put together for a special edition of Popular Mechanics magazine. The money earned here went into getting a set of Genelec loud speakers. They are awesome! Anyway, never give the client the layered PSD file. We ended up with a front cover where they removed the look and grading and was pretty much shite compared to the original below.

Beat the Speed of Light

Credit also goes to Jesper Banner and Jan "Stewart" Sørensen

Crowd Control Visuals

In the "busy" days of Crowd Control I did some 3D with our band tank. Here is one of them. I also made a quick little video with it. Perhaps something to post?

Model of "Palads" - Well known Copenhagen cinema

Here is a model I did of the historical cinema in Copenhagen, Palads ("Palace"). It was for a video commercial for a disco called "Nord". The front was supposed to be black and grey but I don't think they managed to get permission to change the colors. Here's a picture of the model.

Most of the area around Palads and the area Vesterbro was built. Some building were simple mockups with slap on textures but this needed to be built since we are flying straight in the through the doors of the disco. There is actually a statue on top of the building but due to limited time it would be mad to build it since we we would hardly notice it in the video flythrough. See video below..

First post with links

Hello and welcome to my first blog post!

Here is a link to Crowd Control - the latest band I have worked with. Electronic music and dub is the flavour:

crowdcontrol.dk

My normal website with my current showreel exists here:

thomasbanner.com