The Mill_OHSU Cancer | STASH MAGAZINE

The Mill + W+K: OSHU “One Down: Make Cancer the Victim”

How good can CG medical animation look? How inspiring can a story about cancer cells be? The Mill and Wieden+Kennedy answer those questions with this Fantastic Voyage-like glimpse at the destruction of chronic myeloid leukemia for Oregon Health & Science University.

Robert Sethi, director/CD: “This piece is inspired by reality without trying to replicate it: it’s a way of visually conveying the message that OHSU has found a way to successfully treat a type of cancer. Whilst we did a lot of research to understand cells and cancer, we used it more for inspiration.

“Initially it’s a darker world which progressively lightens as the cancer explodes and disappears. The colors shift and the camera goes from static to loose movements, all conveying this sense of hopefulness and victory.

Ashraf Ghoniem, 3D lead artist at The Mill: “Instead of individually sculpting each cell we used a set of noise and rules to randomly generate them, giving us a lot more freedom. And the comp team took our renders and really pushed the electro-microscope effect to the maximum.”

Agency: Wieden+Kennedy
Producer: Ben Grylewicz
Creative Director: Hal Curtis, Antony Goldstein, Jeff Gillette
Account Director: Brett Corrick
Account Executive: Wayne Kasserman
Writer: Andrew Dickson
Art Director: Chris Thurman

Production Company: Mill+
Director: Robert Sethi
Producer: Dan Roberts
Record Company: Stimmung
Record Company Executive Producer: Ceinwyn Clark
Post-Production / VFX
Post-Production / VFX Company: The Mill
Senior Executive Producer: Sue Troyan
VFX Producer: Dan Roberts
Color Executive Producer: LaRue Anderson
Color Producer: Natalie Westerfield
Creative Director: Robert Sethi
2D Lead Artists: Martin Karlsson
3D Lead Artists: Ashraf Ghoniem
2D Artists: Dag Ivarsoy, Jake Maymudes, Eugene Gauran
3D Artists: Bora Jurisic, Jason Monroe, Chris Goodrich, George Lui, Milton Ramirez, Miguel Guerrero, Robert Chapman, Kenzie Chen, Josh Hatton
Matte Painting: Rasha Shalaby
Colorist: Shane Reed
Editorial: Victor Jory, Luke Kraman
Previs: Matt Neapolitan, Jason Jansky, Bridget Warrington, Victor Duncan
Design: Eugene Gauran, Gawain Liddard
Art Support: Jeff Langlios, Ashley Forbito
Production Coordinator: Antonio Hardy

Immediate Byte