Santa Monica, CA (August 1, 2016) -- Boutique VFX and animation studio Brickyard VFX was recently tapped by Deutsch LA to build a fully CG environment for the new Volkswagen spot “Graph.” The spot puts the new Tiguan inside a line graph, with the line acting as a road. Dynamic animations change the road’s path and characteristics to correspond with the voiceover.

Brickyard kicked off the project with detailed previsualization in Autodesk Maya; several members of the Brickyard team were also on-set with production company Caviar to ensure a smooth shoot. Brickyard’s team of artists, led by Patrick Poulatian and David Blumenfeld, then completed tracking, stabilizing, and match-moving to align the car with the movements in the previz environment. Since the Tiguan was shot on a motion base, artists also needed to digitally replace all tires and rims. The graph environment was then designed and animated in full CG using Maya; lighting and rendering was completed in Redshift, a GPU-accelerated biased renderer.

For the road, Blumenfeld wrote a custom software tool called Roadrunner to dynamically construct and animate the road in front of the car using predefined animation parameters. This allowed artists to easily make changes without having to run dynamic simulations each time. Artists also used Thinkinetic’s Pulldownit, a Maya plugin, which generated a three dimensional Voronoi pattern for the road’s cracks and asphalt chunks.

“This was a fun spot and the combination of design, previz, and some creative post solutions helped achieve the unique concept that Deutsch and Volkswagen envisioned,” said Poulatian, Brickyard’s Lead VFX Artist on the spot. “We’ve collaborated with Deutsch on many Volkswagen and other projects over the years and it was a pleasure to work with that team again.”

To view a VFX breakdown, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IRraqeA8Qo



About Brickyard VFX
Brickyard is a digital production studio skilled in high-end visual effects, animation, design and creative development for advertising, feature films and emerging media. With shops in Boston and Santa Monica, Brickyard is artist-centric at the core, fostering a close collaboration of not only artist-to-director but the entire creative team. Within a cozy eclectic production space, Brickyard assembles a customized crew of designers, animators, and compositors for every project. For company information please contact Kirsten with Brickyard VFX Atlantic at (617) 262-3220 or Steve with Brickyard VFX Pacific at (310) 453-5722, or visit http://www.brickyardvfx.com.

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CREDITS: VW “Graph”

Client: Volkswagen

Agency: Deutsch LA
Chief Creative Officer: Pete Favat
Creative Director: Curt Johnson
Creative Director: Todd Carey
Senior Art Director: Charlie Brandwick
Copywriter: Newton Cox
Associate Integrated Producer: Alex Saevitz
Senior Integrated Producer: Samantha Bonom
Executive Producer: Erik Press
Director of Integrated Production: Vic Palumbo

Production Company: Caviar
Director: Jett Bitsack
Producer: Omar Bustos
Executive Producer: Darren Foldes

VFX/Finishing: Brickyard VFX
Lead VFX Artist: Patrick Poulatian
VFX Artist: Mandy Sorenson
Head of CG: David Blumenfeld
Tracking/Match Move: Joseph Chiechi
VFX Assistant On Set: Tom Saunders
Design: Anton Thallner
3D Scan: Jan Huybrechs
Producer: Britney Frandsen
Senior Producer: Linda Jackson

Edit: Steelhead

Audio: Lime Studios
Audio Mixer: Loren Silber
Audio Assistant: Mark Nieto
Executive Producer: Susie Boyajan

Telecine: BeachHouse
Colorist: Mike Pethel
Executive Producer: Denise Brown