October 24th, 2008
Kalevala Jewelry was launching a new product family of Thor's Hammer jewelry for men. Creatives Sanna Paananen and Johanna Mannila of Dynamo contacted Piñata with an idea of making a film to promote the jewelry. The manufacturer had previously shot a print commercial for the product line featuring a distinctive red-haired male model and they were planning to use the same photo in the film. Using a still image as a part of a film isn't really something that usually gets the animators' blood flowing, so we knew we had to come up with a creative way of combining the elements into a good entity.
Projecting still image to a 3D model
Mika Rantala started working on the basics of the animation with rough drafts. The film was to be broadcast exclusively in movie theatres so we had different possibilities with the story telling and rhythm compared to a traditional television advertisement. Mika mapped the male model onto a rough 3D model to see how we could create enough illusion of life to make the guy a natural part of the film instead of a clumsy extra. The dropping jewelry was animated with a physics simulation to get a real feel of mass and movement to the products. Soon it became apparent that with the right kind of pacing, lights and sound effects we could produce a cool film that fits the brand perfectly. Sanna and Johanna of Dynamo thought so too and we got a green light for producing the animation.
While Jani Karvonen took up finishing the modeling and animation work on the 3D male model, Mika continued honing the basic structure of the film along with the simulation, materials and lighting. For the first half of the process we held on to the idea of having a slow motion close-up of a pair of earrings as they fell down in front of the camera. This idea was later dropped in favor of keeping the beginning of the film more abstract and not revealing the actual products until the end.
Slow motion close-up test
Henri Tani did the post production on the lightning in the sky to justify the massive soundtrack that will hopefully rock some seats and popcorn in selected theatres. The sound effects were made by Juri Seppä of Humina (www.humina.net). Juri mixed two separate versions of the soundtrack: one for the movie theaters and another one for the web to have a little mercy on peoples' tiny Logitechs.
Compositing
Credits
Client: Kalevala KoruAgency: Dynamo
Creatives: Sanna Paananen, Johanna Mannila
Account Manager: Tuula Aula
Production Planner: Krista Vilo
Sound: Humina/Juri Seppä