The Art of More - Main Titles

As Art Director I was responsible for concept through design and finish. I led the creative and technical aspects of production, from modeling the sculptures to rendering the glass and bringing the renders together in the final composite. I designed the lighting, texturing and camera animation to all work together in establishing the dark mood and tense energy of the show.

The aim of the piece was to come up with a visual concept that contrasted the glamour and danger of the New York auction world, and give some hints at the backstory and themes of the series.

studio:  yU+co
client:  Sony Pictures Television

For season three of the popular HBO series, I worked on modeling, rigging, animating and rendering four of the new vignettes that the writers and yU+co came up with.

Google HQ transforms into Alphabet, Amazon drones deliver champagne to a rooftop party, a Tesla factory appears and churns out vehicles, and the Uber balloon is joined by a Lyft balloon that jostles for position.

studio:  yU+co
client:  HBO

I worked as Animation Lead on yU+co’s section of the main-on-end titles for The Jungle Book. Director Jon Favreau wanted to transition from the photoreal rendering of the film into a storybook style, so we came up with the device of slowly flying into the cover art of the book and into a fanciful world of vignettes from the film.

I designed and animated the scene with Baloo and the honey bees, animated many of the birds, insects and fish, and helped with elements throughout the piece.

studio: yU+co
client: Walt Disney Pictures

IPG Mediabrands recently launched a metric for assessing and predicting the future health of companies in the rapidly changing global economy. They have ranked the top 100 companies in the world according to this metric, calling it the D100. In order to explain their research and process, they brought us in to create an animation illustrating their concept of brand dynamism.

I was Art Director and CG Lead on this piece, supervising a team of 2D and 3D designers and working on camera animation, design, lighting, texturing, rendering and composite.

studio:  Midnight Sherpa
client:  IPG Mediabrands

We divided the main-on-end sequence into five sections inspired by five World Fairs. I was lead on three sections, responsible for modeling, lighting, animation, rendering and compositing.
 

We used an innovative pipeline to create the feel of vintage posters, rendering a UV pass and variety of utility passes from Cinema 4D, and doing a majority of the color and texturing in After Effects.

studio:  yU+co
client:  Walt Disney Pictures
creative director:  Synderela Peng
technical director: Marc Leidy
compositing supervisor: Stevan Del George

For the 2015 Google IO conference, we created a three minute animation to introduce keynote speaker Sundar Pichai.  

The animation was designed to to fill a large auditorium with 270° video spanning five screens, 17 feet high and 591 feet wide.

The story begins with a countdown that freezes with 7 seconds to go, and follows a little red dot as he journeys through a world of apps to repair some missing code and resume the countdown to trigger the fireworks that introduce the speaker.  

As CG lead I developed a streamlined and consistent method for generating the 270° projections from a single camera rig, oversaw a team of animators, and handled the modeling, lighting, animation, rendering and compositing of several scenes.

studio:  yU+co
client:  Whirled

I designed the main title reveal for the Academy Award nominated film Dirty Wars directed by my brother Rick.

After multiple iterations we settled on a deceptively simple solution - a few compositing tricks and some motion tracking. This solution enhanced the mood of the opening without creating a break from the rhythm and style of the film.

I was CG Lead and Art Director on the projection mapping experience designed for the 2016 LA New Years Eve celebration at Grand Park. I supervised the 3D team and contributed to design, animation and compositing.

studio:  yU+co
client:  Grand Park LA / Music Center

Sketches of Iran: A Glimpse from the Front Lines of Human Rights is a collection of cartoons and commentaries about human rights in Iran. I created this animation to promote the launch of the book.

The book’s publisher provided me with the all of the artwork from the book, which I separated into layers in After Effects in order to create the time-lapse effect of the cartoons being sketched.

client: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

I handled the snowflakes and steam effects for this McDonald’s spot introducing the McCafé rewards card. 

studio:  yU+co
agency:  Davis Elen Advertising

I pitched the concept for these main-on-end titles as series of composed arrangements of family photos, punctuated with magical whirlwind animations that disrupt and reconfigure these arrangements. This adds energy and visual interest, but it also echoes the story of the film, as Kyle (Owen Wilson) and Peter Reynolds (Ed Helms) search for their father and repeatedly have to re-evaluate their family history.

I had the opportunity to art direct the project, working with the director Lawrence Sher on everything from layout to textures. I also developed the dynamics simulations and whirlwind animations for the CG photographs, as well as the shading and rendering.

studio:  yU+co
client: Alcon Entertainment
director: Lawrence Sher
creative director: Garson Yu

I designed the main titles for the 2015 film From Baghdad to Brooklyn.  As a friend of the director I had been involved with the film from early on, so I was able to come up with a concept that is filled with connections and references to the story.  

director:  Jennifer Utz

yU+co was asked to create a philosophy statement video for Flex, as part of their rebrand campaign.  As a CG Lead on this project I contributed design, animation, rendering and compositing.

studio: yU+co
client: Flex

I was lead designer on this Anthem spot for The Wall Street Journal, produced at The Wilderness.  Simple parallax effects combined with a precisely timed edit give it a high-energy polish.

studio:  The Wilderness
client:  The Wall Street Journal