SONY Cat & Mouse

September 2012 –– 

Info: The divine folks at Wieden Kennedy Portland invited munkowitz to assemble and lead a small team of GFX mercenaries into the lovely confines of MPC Los Angeles to generate a fuckload of graphic content for the video wall component in a rather meaty SONY campaign.

Certainly the most exciting aspect of the project was the graphic language being such a prominent storytelling device, alongside the sheer volume of screens to be generated for such a massive visual element in the piece.

The Film

–– 01

GFX Methodology

–– Reconstruction

The list of graphic components was immense, the primary items being a system of 3D Facial Reconstruction taken from a thermal snapshot, an evolving UI interface framing the Identification process, a global CCTV treatment and overlay, a point-cloud tracking device to analyze the agent intruder, and an assortment of data screens and readouts.

The approach to this daunting list was simple: generate a base grid and graphic framework to evolve all the components from a single source file where the grid served as the design foundation, easily allowing for a prolific and iterative design process.

GFX Facial Reconstruction

–– Mograph & Plexus

The Facial Reconstruction mesh was built using a variety of C4D mograph techniques and supported by an array of graphic detailing using sprites and Plexus. The concept was to evolve the head from a low-poly mesh to a high-poly wireframe; and then advancing to the final stage by filling in the skin in the recesses of the high-resolution wireframe.

The Plexus waves were used to usher in each advancing stage of reconstruction until the final mesh matched that handsome mug of Mr. Daniel Craig. The team loved the idea of a graphical scan - from back to front - connecting tissue and polygons with each scan until finally those baby blues are materialized with the rest of his beautiful face.

GFX Screen Design

–– 04

The aesthetic for the UI interfaces was future forward, where the absence of windows and border treatments give way to a modern, open framework of UI detailing. With such an advanced reconstruction process underway the UI was to mirror the visual density of the computer function.

This unified grid language easily allowed for a healthy iterative process, where versioning out the library of unique designs became a efficient exercise in graphic domination since all the grids lined up to the pixel - populate and destroy my pretty peoples.

GFX CCTV Tracking UI

–– 05

Greatly inspired by the Terminator 4 Machine Vision; this language was used to track the intruder's progress through the antagonist's complex, drawing a point cloud based from 3d tracks of each shot. A skeleton foundation was also drawn using plexus to pinpoint the agent's progress through the variety of obstacles on his way to the control center.

Unfortunately, the tracking UI was simplified and pushed back in comp so in the final piece it's not very prevalent; but that's the beauty of these collects - you get to show all the rad shit that gets squashed by the peoples who don't always have the best taste in these matters.

Additional Design
–– 06

A variety of other design was executed, most notably some variants of a point-cloud map shown on the phone screen, as the team iterated quite a bit on that moment in the commercial; not sure why.

And let's throw in a few other juicy process stillions and finish it off with the always fluffy style-guide, which was presented to the agency at the beginning of the project; does a body good.