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Coldplay Archives - Trunk | Animation Production Company

16

Oct
2014

In news / blog

By Layla

Mila Furstova at the Eames Gallery

On 16, Oct 2014 | In news / blog | By Layla

Here’s an image from our joint chat with Mila Furstova about the Coldplay project last night at Eames Fine Art. Mila’s exhibition is on till the 19th!

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05

Sep
2014

In Press

By Pip

Coldplay

On 05, Sep 2014 | In Press | By Pip

Trunk Animation creates Coldplay ‘Ghost Stories’ album stream. Last week saw Coldplay release a full 43 minute stream of their 6th studio album on iTunes, a week before it was released. The fans went wild. Richard Barnett at Trunk Animation was approached by commissioner Sam Seager at Parlophone with an image, and a question. The image turned out to be Coldplay’s beautiful new album cover designed by Mila Fürstová, and the question, can we bring the mesmerizing, highly detailed etching to life, without losing its look and character?! A plan was hatched, some tests carried out and rather than just creating a 10 second looping GIF, Trunk Directors Alasdair + Jock came up with the idea of an epic 43 minute long animated film that unfolds as the album is played. To begin with Mila’s Ghost Stories artwork had to be meticulously traced by hand, basically pixel by pixel, in order that Alasdair + Jock and their team at Trunk could work at the scale necessary, 7K, which is nearly 4 times HD! The new high-resolution image they created enabled tiny elements within Mila’s etching to be worked on in a lot more detail, allowing for tiny sections to be animated, and dynamic camera moves added. Jock noted, ‘the painstaking attention to detail in the re-drawing was essential in order to retain the aesthetic of Mila’s artwork, and allow new elements to be added and animated”. During this process sections of the image had to be re-imagined in order that when you moved one object or character, you weren’t then left with a hole in the background, so Jock had to learn Mila’s style of mark making. The film used a multitude of animated techniques, and a team of 10 animators and art workers using 3D, 2D cuts outs, and classical 2D hand drawn came together to create the astounding 50 individual sections. Each section had to be animated in such a way that they could be looped, ranging from 30 secs to an impressive 2 minutes, which of course just made everything that little bit harder! Once animated, each section then had to go through a heavy compositing and effects stage in order to pull all the different techniques together, and make sure the line style in the animation was exactly the same as that of the album artwork. To help build an overall visual narrative for the album, the team slowly revealed more and more detail as the tracks progress allowing the viewer to travel in and out of what is in essence a world within a world. The team also utilised time-lapse photography and SFX to create the world ‘outside’ the wings. Time lapse clouds, sea, and mist are mixed with affected art worked shooting stars and a waxing and waning moon which casts the wings into darkness as track 5 ‘Midnight’ progresses in the middle of the album. The amount of detail, the length, and the technical processes involved were so vast that Trunk had to bring in an extra bank of powerful computers, known as a render farm, to crunch the raw data. 53,000 unique frames had to be processed in such a way that the process wouldn’t grind to a halt, which meant that some 300,000 smaller pre-renders had to be made over 4 long and grueling days. (A special thanks to our fuse box for providing us with two lovely blow outs, wiping out 7 hours of work!) Al notes ‘It was a massive undertaking but we wanted to create something unique for the album, and we loved the idea of bringing this image to life with some really beautiful movement, in a way that matched the intricate and complex look of Mila’s artwork.’ Richard added ‘The finished project has to be up there in our top 5 along with the projections for Madness at the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Rok’s lyric vid for The Rolling Stones, our visuals for Keith Urban at the Country Music Awards, and of course Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano visuals!’ The final film was streamed on iTunes, May 12th at 9pm. And Coldplay’s 12 million fans took to Twitter immediately with a buzz of lovely comments and messages, they of course loved the album, and gushed at the animation, and as @Coldplay tweeted ‘Kudos and a thousand thank yous @trunkanimation for creating such a beautiful animation’, we instantly made hundreds of new friends! It has been short listed for a UK Music Video award. Click below for press coverage:-

Animation Magazine

Animation Magazine eu

Animation World Network

Creative planet

Digital Arts

Motionweeknight

MTV

Music Week

Page

Promonews

Reuters

Skwigly

Televisual

Credits:-

Direction- Alasdair + Jock

Production Company Trunk Animation

Album artwork- Mila Fürstová

Artist- Coldplay

2D animation- Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits, Zoe Matzko, Jeroen Jaspaert, Aaron Lampert, Valentina Delmiglio

3D animation- Layla Atkinson Artworking- John Harmer, Valentina Delmiglio, Jock Mooney Time lapse- Mo Hague

Compositing- Chris Sayer, Alasdair Brotherston

Line Producer- Pedro Lino

Producer- Richard Barnett

Label Parlophone

Commissioner- Sam Seager/Parlophone

DataUpload- Chillibean

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Coldplay | Ghost Stories

On 22, May 2014 | In Alasdair + Jock, Director Page, directors, Music Promos, Visuals | By Richard


Credits:-
Direction- Alasdair + Jock
Production Company Trunk Animation
Album artwork- Mila Fürstová
Artist- Coldplay
2D animation- Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits, Zoe Matzko, Jeroen Jaspaert, Aaron Lampert, Valentina Delmiglio
3D animation- Layla Atkinson
Artworking- John Harmer, Valentina Delmiglio, Jock Mooney
Time lapse- Mo Hague
Compositing- Chris Sayer, Alasdair Brotherston
Line Producer- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Label Parlophone
Commissioner- Sam Seager/Parlophone
Data Upload- Chillibean

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22

May
2014

In Features
news / blog
Press

By Richard

Alasdair + Jock | Coldplay

On 22, May 2014 | In Features, news / blog, Press | By Richard

Trunk Animation creates Coldplay ‘Ghost Stories’ album stream.

Last week saw Coldplay release a full 43 minute stream of their 6th studio album on iTunes, a week before it was released. The fans went wild.

Richard Barnett at Trunk Animation was approached by commissioner Sam Seager at Parlophone with an image, and a question. The image turned out to be Coldplay’s beautiful new album cover designed by Mila Fürstová, and the question, can we bring the mesmerizing, highly detailed etching to life, without losing its look and character?!

A plan was hatched, some tests carried out and rather than just creating a 10 second looping GIF, Trunk Directors Alasdair + Jock came up with the idea of an epic 43 minute long animated film that unfolds as the album is played.

To begin with Mila’s Ghost Stories artwork had to be meticulously traced by hand, basically pixel by pixel, in order that Alasdair + Jock and their team at Trunk could work at the scale necessary, 7K, which is nearly 4 times HD! The new high-resolution image they created enabled tiny elements within Mila’s etching to be worked on in a lot more detail, allowing for tiny sections to be animated, and dynamic camera moves added. Jock noted, ‘the painstaking attention to detail in the re-drawing was essential in order to retain the aesthetic of Mila’s artwork, and allow new elements to be added and animated”.
During this process sections of the image had to be re-imagined in order that when you moved one object or character, you weren’t then left with a hole in the background, so Jock had to learn Mila’s style of mark making.

The film used a multitude of animated techniques, and a team of 10 animators and art workers using 3D, 2D cuts outs, and classical 2D hand drawn came together to create the astounding 50 individual sections. Each section had to be animated in such a way that they could be looped, ranging from 30 secs to an impressive 2 minutes, which of course just made everything that little bit harder! Once animated, each section then had to go through a heavy compositing and effects stage in order to pull all the different techniques together, and make sure the line style in the animation was exactly the same as that of the album artwork.

To help build an overall visual narrative for the album, the team slowly revealed more and more detail as the tracks progress allowing the viewer to travel in and out of what is in essence a world within a world. The team also utilised time-lapse photography and SFX to create the world ‘outside’ the wings. Time lapse clouds, sea, and mist are mixed with affected art worked shooting stars and a waxing and waning moon which casts the wings into darkness as track 5 ‘Midnight’ progresses in the middle of the album.

The amount of detail, the length, and the technical processes involved were so vast that Trunk had to bring in an extra bank of powerful computers, known as a render farm, to crunch the raw data. 53,000 unique frames had to be processed in such a way that the process wouldn’t grind to a halt, which meant that some 300,000 smaller pre-renders had to be made over 4 long and grueling days. (A special thanks to our fuse box for providing us with two lovely blow outs, wiping out 7 hours of work!)

Al notes ‘It was a massive undertaking but we wanted to create something unique for the album, and we loved the idea of bringing this image to life with some really beautiful movement, in a way that matched the intricate and complex look of Mila’s artwork.’ Richard added ‘The finished project has to be up there in our top 5 along with the projections for Madness at the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Rok’s lyric vid for The Rolling Stones, our visuals for Keith Urban at the Country Music Awards, and of course Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano visuals!’

The final film was streamed on iTunes, May 12th at 9pm. And Coldplay’s 12 million fans took to Twitter immediately with a buzz of lovely comments and messages, they of course loved the album, and gushed at the animation, and as @Coldplay tweeted ‘Kudos and a thousand thank yous @trunkanimation for creating such a beautiful animation’, we instantly made hundreds of new friends!

;

Credits:-
Direction- Alasdair + Jock
Production Company Trunk Animation
Album artwork- Mila Fürstová
Artist- Coldplay
2D animation- Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits, Zoe Matzko, Jeroen Jaspaert, Aaron Lampert, Valentina Delmiglio
3D animation- Layla Atkinson
Artworking- John Harmer, Valentina Delmiglio, Jock Mooney
Time lapse- Mo Hague
Compositing- Chris Sayer, Alasdair Brotherston
Line Producer- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Label Parlophone
Commissioner- Sam Seager/Parlophone
Data Upload- Chillibean

Making Of

Director- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Audio Mix- JM Finch @Fonic

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12

May
2014

In Features
news / blog
Press

By Richard

Coldplay ‘Ghost Stories’ stream

On 12, May 2014 | In Features, news / blog, Press | By Richard

12th May 9pm GMT

Coldplay ‘Ghost Stories’ itunes album stream!

http://t.co/ybyzyYiyKc NOW! (Just click the Featured Video.)

If you’re reading this, then stop and get yourself to itunes NOW! Where they are streaming the whole of Coldplay’s new album with visuals by Alasdair + Jock! Over the past couple of months, we’ve been painstakingly bringing Mila Fürstová’s beautiful album artwork to life, and creating a sequence for the entire length of the new Ghost Stories album.

The piece has been made using a multitude of techniques, incorporating 3D, 2D cuts outs, classical hand drawn and time-lapse photography, all brought together with hours and hours of artworking and compositing.

Mila’s etching had to be meticulously traced by hand, basically pixel by pixel, in order that we could work at the scale necessary, 7K, which is nearly 4 times HD! The project pushed our computers to the limit, as well as all our animators, artworkers, directors and compositors. When the label first called about the project, we carried out some in-house tests so we would know exactly what we were letting ourselves in for, but when you want to make something really special, you always know you’re going to pull some late ones! Alasdair + Jock, fresh from creating Lily Allen’s lyric video for Air Balloon, worked tirelessly, as Jock headed up the team re-creating Mila’s artwork, and Alasdair took charge of pulling all 53,000 frames together. The piece contains around 50 separate loops from flying fish to a spinning gyroscope, and journeys through the album cover allowing audiences to get intimate with the artwork whilst listening to the album in its entirety for the first time.
Commissioned by Sam Seager at Parlophone, the project has to be up there in our top 5 favourites along with our projections for Madness at the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Rok’s lyric vid for The Rolling Stones, our visuals for Keith Urban at the Country Music Awards, and of course Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano visuals!
Trunk’s MD Richard Barnett headed up the project, whilst producer Pedro Lino line produced the animation.

We’ll tell you all more about it after the event, but for now, go and enjoy the album, and we hope you love the loops!

You can see more information about the album release here http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/idUSnMKWCrwhha+1e0+MKW20140512

Credits

Direction-
Alasdair + Jock

Band-
Coldplay

2d animation-
Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits
Zoe Matzko
Jeroen Jaspaert
Aaron Lampert
Valentina Delmiglio

3d animation-
Layla Atkinson

Artworking-
John Harmer
Valentina Delmiglio
Jock Mooney

Time lapse-
Mo Hague

Compositing-
Chris Sayer
Alasdair Brotherston

Album artwork-
Mila Fürstová

Line Producer-
Pedro Lino

Producer-
Richard Barnett

Commissioner-
Sam Seager/Parlophone

Data Upload-
Chillibean

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/idUSnMKWCrwhha+1e0+MKW20140512

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