Samsung Prismview

A guide to future-proofing your video display

Samsung came to Room 214 looking for a teaser video to drive engagement for their B2B campaign highlighting the benefits of investing in quality technology up-front.

We were responsible for defining the art direction and tone of the campaign, with an eBook & an introduction video being the main deliverables.

I worked with their creative director to define the art direction in a form that would translate well across "print" and motion graphics.

We worked with them to script, storyboard, and provide a proof-of-concept/motion test before moving into full production.

I made this quick lil' "X-wing" animation as a proof-of-concept to pitch the style internally. Not all the techniques used here ended up making it to the final version as it ended up being easier to just use sketch n' toon in C4D and composite in Ae.

Style test: 

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Technical Challenges

Technically, this was my most complex video to date, with combining 2D/3D heavily between AE & C4D, a tight timeline, and a limited budget.

I had recently finished EJ's C4D Basecamp through School of Motion, and this was my first chance to put my newly-minted 3D skills to the test with a mixture of modeling, Sketch n' Toon, and compositing to integrate into the mainly 2/2.5D project in Ae.

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Dot character rigging

The first technical challenge was to figure out a procedural way to animate the dot character in a way that was art directable, semi-realistic, easily editable, and visually interesting.

I experimented with lots of different methods like Cartoon MoBlur, Super Lines, and Speed Lines, but all ended up falling short for various reasons such as speed, repeatability, and lack of accuracy.

It was time to admit that a custom solution was going to be best. In broad strokes, I knew I wanted to be able to easily modify the path it was following, the length, width, and to make sure that I could make it feel relatively organic with some nice squash/stretch principles applied.

I did some research and found out that you can calculate the speed/velocity of the start/end properties of a path in Ae, and I based the rest of the properties off that value, allowing me to thin/extend or expand/squash as the velocity sped/slowed.

I made some base sliders to set the stroke width, set minimum & maximum lengths, and turn on/off the echoes.

2D/3D integration & compositing

Simple objects were built in Ae to preserve render speed, and the "fans" in the stadium were actually animated with text animators (inspiration from my friend Kyle Hamrick's #textperiment series).

In this scene, the display was a .c4d file imported through Cineware using the Ae Comp Camera, with a nice stack of effects used to match the style of the native Ae objects. Most of the 3D in the project is integrated in this way

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Final Effects stack & export

I chose to keep all the final post effects in the main comp to keep the project as workable as possible until I hit the final render. In this case, it was actually a simple effects stack and some blending mode trickery that got us to the final look.

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Credits:

Agency: Room 214

Creative Direction: Elizabeth Bernard

Animation, Art Direction, Design, Sound design: Brent Walker