Permanent Collection

Totally Nailing the Look for TotallyMoney

Posted on Friday, January 13, 2023

Director Mateus de Paula Santos walks Stash fans thru how he and the LOBO/Ground Control animation crew achieved the painterly 3D/2D treatment in this new spot for UK financial institution TotallyMoney.

Mateus de Paula Santos: “To achieve a true hand-painted feel, we needed each frame of the film to look like an individual painting, with its own texture, configuration of brush strokes, etc., so when played in-sequence we would have a jittering effect indicative of frame-by-frame animation.

“That was achieved by using a combination of tools and by mixing 2D and 3D animation. The backgrounds were created in Adobe Photoshop with various sets of brush strokes painted over the original artwork creating different iterations of the same scenarios that were looped to produce that living, fluttering effect.

“The 3D renders and corresponding paint-overs were then taken to Nuke, where a machine learning tool was used to interpolate between the hand-painted frames, creating a different set of textures for every frame in the animation.”

“As for the characters, they were animated in 3D using Maya, with additional cloth simulation for the bride’s dress done in Houdini.

“During the Look Development phase, the characters were given a painterly finish, but that was static. In order for their brush strokes to display the desired randomness across the frames, the Photoshop artists picked up the renders and painted over four frames for each second of animation.

“The 3D renders and corresponding paint-overs were then taken to Nuke, where a machine learning tool was used to interpolate between the hand-painted frames, creating a different set of textures for every frame in the animation.

“The backgrounds were also given the same treatment, and everything was comped in Nuke. Finally, some color grading work was performed in DaVinci Resolve.”

Watch the making of video: