Urbanicity: A Case Study

What was the main concept and inspiration for Urbanicity–Air?

Urbanicity is still a work in progress. It regards the pitch for a documentary on urban issues. There were a series of titles that we were going to come up with for the different stages of the show. One was on energy resources and damage to the planet, others about urban destruction, graffiti, or damage to property. Lots of different ideas. I wanted to create them with the utmost flexibility and later on add a lot more depth to them. That’s really where these two titles came out because they both stand alone very, very well and display very unique techniques, especially the 3D one.

The first one is more on the nature side of things, a story telling about clean air, essentially, going from bad to good, pointing out how we can change the world as it is at the moment.

It is a transition done with interesting time remapping. It relied a lot on stock footage suitable for time remapping, which was great. The clouds moving in the background, the grass growing in the foreground, the wind turbines were all stock footage elements. In fact that dust is as well, but I didn’t time-remap that.

I just wanted to build this sort of journey, from bad to good essentially, and make the color reflect that. You have this very dark and angry, almost fire-looking start to it, where the clouds are obviously just filthy. There’s no good there; when you look at that and think about breathing, you want to cough.

A lot of the line art imagery actually came from a book called Neubau Welt, which is an entire library of phenomenal vector art all on one CD. It’s an incredible library; I love it. This was a good starting point because it really gave us a good artwork to play with, and that’s where the crane idea came from, by the way.

I thought: “What’s going to stand against the background of that much dirt?” and I figured that something digging or pulling or mining would have been really cool. It got the job done quickly because the stock art was adding a certain amount of detail to it, which I think worked really well. The dust was added over the top, just to give that choking feeling to things.

And then the scene goes from mining and fossil fuels to electricity, which is a healthier form of power but has a visual impact on the countryside, with these massive towers and wires.

We wanted to take it on from there so you get to the wind-powered section, where you have turbines that pull the power in. They look a little more like trees and can be a little bit more hidden in some respects, and blend a little bit more into the environment. They stand alone without being connected to other items.

As we move from there to now, the grass is starting to grow again, the colors change, we’ve got water that’s falling, and a general clean feeling to it. We’ve animated the swirls on the logo to reflect the growing of the grass. We’ve also duplicated the grass clip four or five times, just to add a little depth to it. There were some really nice elements that ended up working. For instance, the water that goes behind the grass in the foreground; I think it’s kind of cool. I think the end result in this journey from dark to light just worked. The concept and the timing of it all didn’t take too much as it was a very linear process.

Each episode is going to have its own title based on the theme of the content. So if this takes off, we would have to figure out different ways to approach those. To maintain a similar feel of vector and vectorized footage and the same thematic approach, we have to think how that might work.

Figure 7.10a Still frames from Urbanicity–Air, created by Energi Design.

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Can you talk a little bit about the use of colors?

There was a lot of color to start with, and when you got to the end point, because of these textures, you couldn’t see that much difference between start and finish. So, I took a step back. I was trying to get as simple as possible and make the end look very, very clean and make the beginning look the complete opposite.

The posterization of the clouds in the background, for example, had many levels, and I added more colors in each of those, so it became harder to differentiate between the changes in the air as there were too many colors. It was a very detailed, very gradual shift. So, I took everything back a few steps and went right back to two colors, then I went up to four and I think we ended up with six, to give it a bit more impact.

There’s a lot of black on the foreground, while all the graphics in the back are essentially white or very light. These are the main colors, and everything else in between had to sit quite happily in the middle, either in front of it or behind it, in terms of good versus bad.

The fact that the hillside covers the fire effect, which almost had a forest fire feel to it, as if there’s burning going on there—I wanted to cover that up as we move forward in time. That’s now hidden, so we get more to the blue, which is good.

Having drastically changed the now hidden color, the fire, we slightly introduced that fire color here in the turbines. But then as the 3D angle changes they slightly change as well—there’s actually one gradient over the top of the whole piece here—and because of the way the camera moves, certain elements appear in one color and as they move they become the other color. I think that was the kind of feeling we wanted to achieve here. We thought much on how to give a different impression from when you first see the object to when you last see it. That is a lot healthier, if you like, because it has changed its own color space.

In the end it’s all very simple, really: It is mostly blue and there’s just a little bit of detail in the grass; everything else is very clean. It was quite a simple process, all about marking the difference between start and finish, when you can really see clean versus not, and everything is in the same color space.

Would you agree with the statement that basically you’re a storyteller?

I think this word defines a lot of our work. I don’t know if that’s something we tend to do a lot or we get a lot, but it’s mostly a process of beginning, middle, and end, and what’s the story in between. I guess most commercial pieces are like that. I enjoy taking my art for that journey, if you like, and figuring out the best way to approach a story. I think sometimes it is best to present something with a story.

This piece is only 15 seconds long, but you get that sense of history and evolution, people caring about the environment, and visually, at the end you might want to say: “I want to live there.” It’s all very beautiful there, it’s green and lush, while in the beginning you realize how the different things work.

Even in such a short space of time, if you could tell a good story or figure out the best way to represent that change, it massively helps the piece to get done. You end up with a good resolve rather than focusing on one element and saying: “Here’s the title, here’s a few turbines, here’s some clouds, how do we make that last 15 seconds?” which is what we see a lot of people do. Too many artists try to take a series of elements and make them last as long as possible.

If you try to go a little bit deeper and add some narratives, I believe it helps hugely, and I would say a lot of our projects are based around that idea. I think it’s good to start and finish with a transition.

Can you talk about the other Urbanicity titles—Derelict?

This one’s a little bit more surreal. It was as much a technical challenge as anything. I was trying a technique that finally worked very well, and while this is great, I spent much time seeing how far things could be pushed and tested. I think with part of this project the technology was driving the concept. I knew what I wanted to see and I wondered if I could get there.

Figure 7.11a Still frames from Urbanicity– Derelict, created by Energi Design.

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I started by adding the glowing swirls onto the floor and they blended in so nicely. The end was more about freedom and imprisonment and the feeling of it. Hence, the dove and the shadows.

The thing I really liked about this is the original shot that just had a small beam of light in the corner. When I added the glow effect to it, the look was then very golden. I wanted to take the whole room and move it into the same color space but also take all the elements and just blend them completely in, so that they would look like they’re shiny and they’re gold, as if there is some value in them. Not material value, but more the feeling of success, like there’s light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a golden highlight to this dark feeling, there [are] things [that are] bright and shiny.

There’s a positive feeling to the elements that are being animated here. The swirls could have been black and grungy, and so everything else. Just by introducing this light, which almost illuminates the room, I think we just really added a very nice element to it; it made it stand out.

The fireflies at the end of the room are actually just periods: that’s animated type. They’re not particles or anything else, they’re just text. And that was again a technical challenge. Looking in hindsight now I could have used a particle emitter to add more of them and give them some blur, but initially it was just: “Let’s figure out an easy way to do this.” By having them glow, and given the text animation properties of After Effects, the blurs could be keyframed very quickly and apply random opacity levels, so they do tend to flicker. You can catch them occasionally; they fade in and out just as real fireflies would. This was a nice effect, it’s almost like they’re adding the color to the end of the room. It’s not just them trying to blend in, it’s almost like they are actually lighting the space. Without those the project needed something, it needed something like dust, so they might be fireflies, they might be just dust particles if we’d have added more. Things that slowly move in the 3D space, just to add some depth to it. It was more of a technical concept challenge as well as a graphical playground, if you like.

If I’d have gone back and revisited this piece, I probably would have made it a bit darker on the start, leading into the light as it progressed, like the end of the tunnel, where the light is. The shadows from the window at the end of the room would also be darker, and the logo would stand out a little bit more.

In this piece the camera movement is simulating a person exploring the space, with sort of handheld moves. How does that fit in your piece? And about the use of depth of field, as it is a little more evident in this piece, why have you decided to maximize its use here?

On the previous piece the depth of field was consistent and mathematically coherent. That piece was created so that the camera moves and its focal point were exactly positioned. The camera moves were sort of fast, and then they would slow down, and then fast and then slow; during those slow periods of about 200 pixels the point of focus was pretty much dead in the middle, so that the item that was coming into focus was always in focus during the slow move, and then the zoom would go to the next object, which would come into focus just at the right time. Everything was laid out to the pixel. The camera just moved backward and everything worked.

This project, like you say, was very human, and that was what I wanted. It was almost like someone was picking himself up off the floor. It’s the first time they stood up for a while, and they lean to one side, and then they come across it to the other side, then turn and realize there’s hope here. Something is growing and it’s bright, there’s life and it’s almost like walking out the door, knowing that around the corner things are going to be better.

This is always something I like doing—not just thinking in terms of slow movements, or handheld feel to it - this was even actually adding a person into the mix, which I thought was kind of cool, and having him start low down.

All this was just done with a series of keyframes for both the position and the focal point of the camera, which do shift independently of each other. I might have used the [After Effects] null. I’m not sure, but I believe they were just keyframed independently. I then applied random values to both of those parameters in order to get this sort of swaying effect, where they appear to be independent from each other.

The result is that the front might be doing the same movement, but the position would change accordingly, so there’s a wonderful realization that a camera is always mostly fixed pointing in a certain place, whereas with the human head, you always have so many angles of choice; plus you’ve got the eyes, added to that which is another 180 degrees in each direction.

There’s so many points of rotation there that sometimes handheld camera moves in the computer can’t really achieve that feeling. It’s harder to make that work and be believable than maybe moving it as you’re seeing through someone’s eyes, as in this case. And that’s why here and there there’s an occasional shift, because it’s not just the head moving but maybe a flick of the eye. This was cool, actually—a very good challenge.

I like the moves at the end, but again, just going back to it, once the positions were done, I would measure the distance from the camera to the logo and then adjust the depth of field when it comes into it, and make sure that everything else moved accordingly.

I did want that feeling of realization that someone’s holding onto this door and reads the sign; it worked nicely.

I’d love to develop this one a little longer and try to have the person move in and go through that door. And as they do, the brightness would have marked the transition to the intro of the documentary.

When you are working on a variety of projects like these, how do you keep your creative juices flowing?

Well, obviously going out on the bike and clearing my head up in the mountains is great. It helps. Sometimes it feels like your creative pipeline has a block, and it is building up. You know it’s there, so sometimes you just need to blow that pipeline out, and I think a good bike ride and some sunshine is always a big help for me.

I like to go and see a film; I’ll just take an afternoon off, drive into the city, which in itself is kind of different, because you are taken from the environment of a studio, with a small number of people, and a small town feel kind of thing, and then you get into the city. All of a sudden you are surrounded by a lot more visual information, and that in itself gives me a lot of ideas. I see the way colors are in storefronts, or what people are wearing, or what kind of bag someone bought from a store and how that is colored, or something like that.

I sometimes get the most inspiration from bizarre things, so I’ll go and sit somewhere and have coffee and watch people as they walk by, and see color or shape or something that catches my eye. I would then sketch that or take a note. It’s quite bizarre sometimes, people and their color: their clothing color, their fashion choices, what they’re holding, what they’re riding or walking, or what shoes they’re wearing, stuff like that can sometimes just tweak the senses enough for you to say, “Oh, that’s interesting.”

On the other side of things, going to movies and watching titles. The color and framing, the camera and the angles that they used. Occasionally I’ll see a single shot and say, “That’s just the angle I was thinking of, or the way that that color shows up at that angle,” or something like that. And then you have the titles and they always give you some sort of inspiration. It’s not that I go to the movies to get that inspiration, but it’s more that I find some inspiration in most movies.

When I’m abroad, I will bring back from every trip probably four or five design books, every single time I go away. And sometimes the books are so big and heavy I have them shipped over, because they’re too expensive to put in the suitcase. There are a few stores off the back of Covent Garden in London where I could spend all day. They tweak the senses very, very well. The color of them, the book covers themselves, the subject matter; I get a lot of joy from that. I like those stores because books are all around you and there’s books seven or eight shelves up that you have no hope of even getting to, and you look at them and go, “I want that one!” It’s beautiful; I love it. Some of my favorite books I got them from there.

How does the inspiration that you get from outside influence your work?

I think it gives me the ability to look at the project from a different angle. I sometimes find myself as if I’m in a one-way street and the project is blocking the way. I then realize I’m only going at it from one side.

Sometimes if you step away from it and come back later with some sort of inspiration, which changes your thinking or your approach, you find yourself in the same place, but it’s like with floating. You are able to move around and look at the same thing from a slightly different angle: from the other side, or climb up a ladder and look at it from here. And that’s how it actually feels when I come back to a project; I’ve got that new sense of how to look at it. And that is really cool. It doesn’t happen a lot, but sometimes you reach the same block so many times that you need that.

I really enjoy projects when you end up taking a different step, and thinking, “I never thought of that before.” All of a sudden it clicks, and that’s how a lot of projects have done well, by the way.

Like with the absinthe one; I was in France and got a chance to see some of the history of this particular product, and some of the artists associated with it, and to go into the area where it was consumed back in that time. To get a geographical feel for it helped much as well. To just come back and say, “Okay, we have a texture, we have a logo, we have a bottle” —that is so easy to do.

How does research affect your work?

I think a lot of problem solving goes through agencies these days. A lot of the work that we get is quite specific in terms of the project and has a more direct vision. The product is already established or there’s a general feeling for what it is going to look like.

It’s very rare that I have to do massive amounts of research, and absinthe again is a classic one. The research was enjoyable mainly because it was a subject matter in which I was interested and was geographically somewhere I was interested in. It drew me into a desire to actually research it myself and to look at what I could add to the project in doing so.

But a lot of projects that we get are more straightforward in that respect. I don’t want to disrespect anybody in any way by saying that, but a lot of them are predefined. I would like to have projects that do require more research so I could learn more about them and offer more to the project. But the budgets are never there for that kind of work. And that’s why that sort of stuff tends to go through an agency, because they will set aside $10,000 or $15,000 just for research and then do the work. And only after that they will come to someone like me and say, “Hey, can you do the work? We’ve done the research.”

Occasionally, research-wise, I will look into how things had been done previously. I maybe ask myself how a design was done—in case I’m doing a redesign, for example—or how it looked in the past, why it looked that way in the past, if it feels dated, what do I need to change, what is the sort of feel of typography that would go with that particular design, is that an historical choice as opposed to a personal choice. These are all possible questions I might ask.