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Posted on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 5:50 PM by Thornberg
Inside The Process: 2D to 3D
Thornberg & Forester Animates Artist Bryan Christie's Medical Illustrations in 3D for GE's Advanced Imaging at 2010 Vancouver Winter OlympicsImagine turning Auguste Rodin's bronze sculpture The Thinker into a choreographed ballet. This analogy perfectly captures the challenges of medium, vision, and execution set before New York's Thornberg & Forester (T&F) design boutique when they were asked by BBDO in 2009 to create a digital out-of-home campaign for GE's Advanced Imaging™ sponsorship of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.
Working in close collaboration with BBDO's Associate Creative Director Marthinus Strydom, T&F selected a purely 3D medium to turn artist Brian Christie's illustrations into moving athletes.
Remodeling and animating the intricacies of Christie's anatomical illustrations called for T&F's talented team of expert producers, creative directors and animators to reinvent and execute to translate perfect form into perfect function.
Through high-end software and custom mapping of the illustrated human anatomy in 3D, T&F developed a simple formula to match the style and identity of Christie's print campaign. Their attention to painstaking detail and subtlety of design spanned animating body parts to deconstructing and reconstructing complex 3D models. It was necessary to design invisible bones in the renders where design solutions were needed to activate realistic joint movement of the human skeletal structure. The resulting 3D renderings produced by T&F capture precisely the beauty of real athletes in motion through a look inside the bodies of four types of Olympic competitors: a snowboarder, a speed skater, a figure skater and a downhill skier. Speed, pacing, timing, and movement; the complete series of renders form an expertly choreographed dance exclusively by T&F; a flawless, elegant work of art and science that remains entirely true to the original illustrations.
The process itself became the firm's own proprietary approach in its technical skill, creative vision, and design-based solutions. The medium and platforms were the artistic challenge and drive for the New York-based design agency, while the working relationships were the reward.
