When the
agency came to us with the idea to show the increase of money on
the international market in connection with some kind of sexual
relation, we were very enthusiastic. No doubt, we had to do this!
The goal was to
create a world completely made out of banknotes and explicit
characters that stood for themselves. So we spent many days and
nights doing a lot of research finding the right objects such as
furniture, buildings, bridges, certain landscapes, clothes,
etc.
This procedure was
followed by style frames in 2D to evoke the right feeling, tone and
look for the film while having a special origami look in the back
of our minds. After we were done creating rough animatics, we could
start to fine tune our characters, as well as the different
scenarios of the spot. Our final task was to blend all the scenes,
camera tracks and sounds together.
All characters
(Lincoln, Mao and the unknown lady) were created as 3D characters
in Softimage XSI. Therefore, our designing team engaged in a lot of
origami studying. To get used to the technique, we spent a lot of
time with uncountable folding sessions. We took dollar and pound
notes and folded Origami figures until our hands bled.
Then we were able
to start with the digital modeling. Each character received an
individual animation rig. With this digital skeleton we defined
positions, rotations as well as the movements of the
particulars.