Polynoid_Greenpeace | STASH MAGAZINE

Best of Stash 2014 Preview #1: Greenpeace “New Bees”

The Best of Stash 2014 Collection releases in full on Dec 31 but here’s an early taste: A brilliant near-future sci-fi online ad for Greenpeace published in Stash 105 called “New Bees” directed by Polynoid and produced and animated at Woodblock in Berlin.

Ilija Brunck, CG artist at Polynoid/Woodblock in Berlin: “We were contacted directly by Alexander Kalchev at DDB Paris to see if we would be interested in collaborating on a fake commercial to raise awareness of the growing disappearance of honeybees. Alex had a very clear vision of the content of the film and asked us to realise it in our style.

“Finding the right ironic/sarcastic tone for the film was a challenge since it should work as a realistic commercial that advertises robotic bees with all their advantages, and still picture a creepy dystopian future that nobody wants.

“Getting a good track out of the live action plates was sometimes very tricky due to a lot of moving plants and flowers plus strong depth of field. Also, we needed quite a while to define the animation style of the bees so it’s the right mixture of natural and robotic movement.

The plates were shot on a RED Epic. In post production we used ZBrush, Mari and Softimage with Arnold for the 3D. Nuke was used for compositing and Premiere for the edit.

“The schedule was kind of open because Greenpeace did not yet know when they’d use the film. After the shoot in late summer last year, we worked on the spot for a couple of months. It was quite refreshing to work without a fixed deadline since we could really bring everything to a good level.

“The project was part of a bigger Greenpeace campaign to help save the bees. A range of material was produced by different agencies to help raise awareness for the problem. More information about the campaign can be found here: https://sos­bees.org/”

You can sign the SaveTheBees petition here.

For DDB Paris
Creative: Alexander Kalchev

For Woodblock
Director: Polynoid
Artists: Jan Bitzer, Tom Weber, Ilija Brunck, Marco Kowalik, Fabian Pross, Csaba Letay, Michael Heberlein, William Tirloy, Max Stoehr, Sarah Eim, Markus Eschrich
Service production: Soilfilms
DoP: Tanja Häring
Actors: Yoko Nova Schimschar, Luca Brunck Florez
Music: World Gang

Toolkit
RED Epic, ZBrush, Mari, Softimage, Arnold, Nuke, Premiere

Immediate Byte