SASA Commercial

Our commercial for Jakarta-based Milkyway Studio uses stylized 2D animation in a 3D world. About stages of work and behind-the-scenes of the spot creation talk: Art Director Michał Niewiara, CG Supervisor Marek Gajowski and CG Producer Agnieszka Górna.

Creating animation in the anime convention, additionally set in the cyberpunk world, required from us using both the experience and creativity of the team, as well as Platige technological facilities. While working on the project, we used a mocap session that streamlined the previz and layout process, and the resulting material was manually transformed into an animation imitating classic stop motion character movement.

“We solved the character issues by building shaders that are not fully physically correct and more flattened. The faces in particular required careful material development. However, the whole thing was achieved at the compositing stage, where different passages of rendered material are assembled into the final image. The backgrounds were created in the same way. – explains Michał Niewiara – The secret was to give up details which in traditional 2D animation would probably not be painted.  In terms of animation, we used an old trick that has already proved its worth – the movement was designed not to be fully fluid. The idea was to get the most analog feel possible.” – he adds.

One of the main topics discussed with the client was the color scheme of the spot. A cyberpunk city may be associated with a contrasting combination of cold shades broken with red or pink. Michal Niewiara’s task was to find the right colors in such a way that the city would not be too dark. We also created elements such as drones, motorcycles, and a robot to give the spot an appropriate mood.

“We also have the interior of the main character’s room, the interior of the kitchen, the subway station, and the restaurant. We prepared a total of 12 character variants and almost 30 separate elements such as laptops, tablets, phones, robots, goggles, cars, drones, motorcycles. An entire elaborate set of dishes and kitchen tools was also created. We put a lot of work into making sure the result was satisfying for both us and the client.” – comments Marek Gajowski.

The visual momentum of the Sasa project is a rare concept in the advertising reality, which is governed by its own rules. We made sure that the entire world, architecture, characters, gadgets, and vehicles were credibly presented and refined to the smallest detail.

“Project Sasa was a very interesting adventure for us, during which we had a unique chance to prove ourselves in the formula of a cyberpunk anime film. The whole graphic team, led by director Bartek Kik and CG Supervisor Marek Gajowski, showed professionalism and great ambition. Although the bar was set very high, we can already say with full confidence that the result is sensational, and the best proof of that is the client’s satisfaction. We are very happy that we were able to implement such a project”. – concludes Agnieszka Górna.

Credits