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Trunk Animation Archives - Trunk | Animation Production Company

16

Aug
2016

In Press

By Pip

Rok Predin creates stunning visual library for Bingo Players VJ Pat Jagla.

On 16, Aug 2016 | In Press | By Pip

 

When it comes to providing concert visuals Trunk has an impressive client list that includes Elton John, Take That, Keith Urban, Coldplay and Madness (for the Queens jubilee on Buckingham Palace). Their latest collaboration is with international super DJ Bingo Players, allowing them to create work for the fast 110 – 150 B.P.M world of electric dance music.

Bingo Players approached Trunk to make a body of animation that could be mixed by their VJ Pat Jagla during Bingo Players live set. An initial brief from Ted Lovett’s studio in L.A outlined the concept of a “Yellow Takeover” that evolved from Bingo Players trademark acid house smiley face logo with lightning bolt eyes. The concept had the yellow from this logo spread outsides the confines of the circular logo and infect the surrounding environment, metaphorically spreading Bingo Players reach. This also mirrors the expansion and acceptance of electronic dance music within the wider world.

The main concept of the “Yellow Takeover” was presented as five distinct stories or chapters by the creative’s at Trunk. Two feature Op and Pop Art. Two comprise fast edited news clips and gifs interspersed with Bingo Players logo spinning, swooping, flipping and pulsing to the beat akin to an 80’s TV channel ident. While the final one features in Rok’s words “ a slick 3D version where a cool yellow liquid covers and envelops a mass of shiny black shapes in close up, all of which only become apparent when the camera pans out”.

For the first time Trunk worked with Pablo Balderas, his masterly editing skills lent a fresh perspective and different energy to the work as noted by Producer Richard Barnett “ It was great working with Ted and Pablo on this project, we loved Ted’s concept and had great fun fleshing out the ideas he presented to us while Pablo’s editing really captured the frantic pace of European or electric dance music”.

All the videos were created in After Effects and Cinema 4D by a team of animators at Trunk. From initial concept to finished animations took a fast paced and frantic 4 weeks. In total a whooping 35 minutes worth of animation was created. This included 15mins of unique content and a further 20mins of loops that Pat would be able to mix and drop into the set to match the energy of the music. As Bingo Players legendary live performances are noted for their heart racing, fist pumping and body popping joyful atmosphere it was gratifying that they felt the finished visuals Trunk created perfectly matched their style and approach.

Click below for press coverage :-

Animation Magazine europe

AWN

Lesterbanks

Promonews

Credits:-

Music: Bingo Players “Rattle” (original mix)
Art Director: Ted Lovett
Director: Rok Predin
Compositing: Rok Predin, Steven Azancot, Layla Atkinson
Producer: Richard Barnett

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07

Apr
2015

In Press

By Pip

Trunk Animation’s Layla Atkinson directs two 30-second TV trailers for the BBC.

On 07, Apr 2015 | In Press | By Pip

To promote BBC Four’s new series The Sound of Song Red Bee Media contacted Trunk to create two TV spots. The up-coming series explores the story of modern music and how elements come together to form our favourite songs. An initial brief centered around two “factoids” featured in the series. The first was how a riff can be modified and used by a variety of artists. In this case Chic’s bass line from 1979’s Good Times was modified and used by many artists, ranging from Queen to Daft Punk. The second was how, in 1926 while recording Heebie Jeebies Louis Armstrong’s sheet music fell from the stand. Armstrong continues singing, improvising his lyrics and inadvertently inventing the “scat” singing style.

Layla notes “I wanted both trailers to share a restricted palette, a pared back illustrative style and sinuous lines to create unity across the two disparate stories”. To that end both spots use a simple and elegant graphic style infused with humour that flows beautifully with the music discussed in the trailers.

Each piece finishes with the voiceover strap line “You’ll never listen to your favourite songs in the same way again” a statement that is skillfully presented in these two lovely trailers.

Click below for press coverage :-

B&T

LBB

Motionographer

Skwigly

Credits: –

Director- Layla Atkinson
Animation- Leslie Dart
Line Producer- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Commissioner- Matthew Shapland/Red Bee Media

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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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04

Sep
2014

In Press

By Pip

Lily Allen | Air Balloon

On 04, Sep 2014 | In Press | By Pip

Trunk’s amazing directors Alasdair + Jock have just finished a brilliant new Lyric video for Lily Allen.

The duo were commissioned by Sam Seager at Parlophone to create a lyric video for Lily Allen’s new song Air Balloon, the second single to be released from her as yet un-named third album.
The fun and lively video is in Alasdair + Jock’s distinctive and iconic style, and echoes their wonderful projection onto Buckingham Palace for Madness’s ‘It Must Be Love’, shown during the Queens Diamond Jubilee concert. The new video features a host of Alasdair + Jock’s trademark imagery along with their vibrant colour palette. The typography partially inspired by American neo-pop artist Jeff Koons is rendered in balloon writing, with sentences filling and deflating, and bursting with little puffs of smoke.
To reach the tight deadline the entire video was turned around in an amazing seven days, and it was certainly a full on affair for all involved, especially the directors who worked tirelessly. After creating lyric vids for both ‘The Rolling Stones’ and ‘Vampire Weekend’, this will be Trunk’s third foray into the genre. Producer and MD Richard Barnett notes, ‘As long as we’re into the track, and we have the creative freedom, then they can be great fun to make”. Whilst Jock Mooney added “Working to such an incredibly tight deadline certainly focused the creative process. We knew what we wanted to do was visually ambitious and nearly impossible in the time we had, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to create something that wasn’t as visually sleek and as impressive as we could possibly make”. With Alasdair adding that, “Even though it felt like the undersides of my eyelids were covered in sandpaper I’m glad we stuck to our guns. It’s always worth it in the end!

Click below for press coverage:-

Animation World Network

Animation magazine eu

Kuriositas

Promo News

Skwigly

Televisual

Credits:-
Director: Alasdair+Jock
Producer: Richard Barnett
Illustrator: Jock Mooney
Animation: Layla Atkinson, Pedro Lino, Alasdair Brotherston, Leslie Dart
Commissioner: Sam Seager
Artist: Lily Allen
Record Co: Parlaphone
Prod Co: Trunk Animation

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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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25

Mar
2014

In news / blog

By Richard

Rok Predin’s New Short Film Trailer ‘One of a Kind’

On 25, Mar 2014 | In news / blog | By Richard

Trunk Animation’s director Rok Predin has been working like a demon since the New Year creating his fabulous new film ‘One of a Kind’. The trailer gives a first peak at the sumptuous rich palette, style and feel of this upcoming short. It also features just one of the staggering 73 characters featured in the film. It has been great fun noticing the increasing amount of highlighter ink covering the printed pages stuck to the wall beside Rok, as they mark the progression of each character from concept to completion. Even though there are many pages to go, Rok is confident of a late spring release.

The subject of the film contains a grand evolved theme that, like his short “Back in the Day” (https://vimeo.com/67576646), will resonate with all of us. For the first time in a Rok Predin short a narrator has been used to tell the story. The narration is provided by…..well that’s a secret for now but Rok was chuffed when they agreed to get involved. However, we can tell you that the Ivor Novello award winning composer Daniel Pemberton, who has just finished working on Ridley Scott’s latest feature ‘The Counselor’, is creating the wonderful score. And as always we’re thrilled that Barnaby Templer and Fonic have agreed to come on board to look after the Post Production.

As so many distinct characters are involved in the film it creates a host of challenges for Rok, who notes “The main challenge is to find an efficient way to animate multiple characters and retain their diversity without making custom rigs for each of them”. Working with a small team he is overcoming this and other challenges by pushing his skill set to the max. Using Photoshop, Cinema 4D and After Effects Rok is constructing a multitude of costumes, textures, hairstyles and accessories for his characters all which bear the visual handwriting of their creator.

All of us at Trunk are waiting the late spring with bated breath.  One thing we can be sure of is that the completed film will sit proudly alongside his other well-received shorts that include “The Chase” (https://vimeo.com/58445885) and “Inside” (https://vimeo.com/40523105).

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07

Mar
2014

In news / blog

By Layla

Trunk Towers are doing things

On 07, Mar 2014 | In news / blog | By Layla

We’ve been maintaining radio silence for a while here at Trunk towers but don’t worry! things are happening. Layla’s been at the scissors, Rok’s populating the world with 3d characters and Jock is learning how to accurately model nipples.

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