THE BRIEF

To build an eye catching OLV animated short featuring Winter Olympic athletes and 3D visual elements to highlight the power of Streaming with Xfinity.

The idea is to have the Iconic X be featured as an Olympic game itself and tie into the footage. This could include figure skating, curling, cross country skiing, bobsled, etc.

The camera pulls out of footage to reveal the Iconic Xfinity X in a way associated with the Winter Olympic Games.

A 15 second version to play before online videos, before or during streaming service content, or ads on the various social media platforms.

MY CONTRIBUTIONS

Similar to most other Xfinity Iconic X projects, I had a lot of freedom with this overall look and treatment. The footage was already preselected, but I had to remove about 100 logos from the halfpipe version and if you know a thing or two about roto, took a while.

For the 3D portions – I built everything, modeled some, populated the scene with Mixamo pedestrians, textured, animated, and lit everything. The trick was lining up the camera and the hero athlete to make for as seamless of a transition as I could. From there it was just a matter of getting the amount of detail right. A big part of that comes from lighting, but then when you add in the clouds, the tram, the birds, etc – all that helps sell the final render without taking away from the subject (Iconic X Shape).

CREATIVE PROCESS

Because this idea changed so frequently, I really ended up shooting from the hip with the setup in order to get a result as quickly as possible. Below you can see the montage of how the scene was staged and how it changed over the many hours it took from brainstorm to final render.

After watching plenty of footage I had a good base for how the halfpipe contest was staged and that provided a solid baseplate if you will for the rest of the scene. I then looked at amusement park maps to see how larger event spaces were separated. All of that, influenced by the X shape, led to what you see here. I think the birds and tram are my favorite part about this render.