Project Review: 3D Glass Logo Concepts for Key Art for the film Glass from M. Night Shyamalan in 2019

This 3D Logo I did for Key Art concepts for the film Glass, from M Night Shyamalan was my favorite one personally in the group.

 
 

 This Screen Grab shows the boolean objects I used to make the cracks. I designed the cracks based on a real bullet hole image I found and I hand drew and vectorized the file to make the cutter object.

 

This Screen Grab shows the Cebas: Final Render Rectangular Lights I used to accentuate the edges for legibility since glass materials can be tricky to light for Key Art use.

 

 This flat Clay shader in the screen grab shows base surface at the camera viewpoint. Surface in a 3D Model is what makes the lights and material work. Very important to have a nice model.

 

This 3/4 angle shows the thickness as well as where I hand moved some pieces out, and removed some entirely.

 

 

 

This Screen Grab for the Film Glass, shows everything in the cracks are radiating from the center hole in the letter "A".

 

 This last Screen Grab is a close up on the 3D Logo model letter A the start of the destruction to the logo.

 

 

 

 This 3D Rendered Logo used the same type as above, and shows a solid 3D file with a procedural texture of surface scratches. It's a much faster render with less face count, and a different look.

 

 

 

This last render on that same font above is a simple sharp beveled edge render. Clean.

 

 

 

This next design I also cut it using the shatter cutter I had in concept one above.

This render is a Center Bevel , or Single Point Bevel with both front and back bevels using a mirror modifier. This gives a lot of internal reflections rather that a plain flat extruded style.

 

  This same type face set for me I  also created a soft rounded edge design which is liquid like and  gets nice smooth highlights. To do this I built it out as a Quad model and add in Sub-D to soften and melt the edges. you get no sharp hard chisel reflections.

 

 This last type layout also need to get shattered. I loved doing these as you can see. The second film Split in the trilogy was my inspiration for bringing that look back as an echo to the prior film Poster use of shattered glass.

Project Review

3D Glass Logo Concepts for Key Art for the film Glass from M. Night Shyamalan in 2019

Client:  Universal Pictures via BOND
Project Date:  May 2018.
Direction: Patrick Dillon.

        This next posted project for Patrick Dillon @ BOND was to build out 3D Logos for the final film in his trilogy of films from Unbreakable, to Split, and finally Glass, from M. Night Shyamalan. It was a real treat for me, as M Night is one of my favorite directors, and I loved the two prior films of Unbreakable and Split, so I really wanted to do this freelance.

     I began doing glass logos and illustrations in 3D back in 2001 while at BLT Communications on the James Bond Die Another Day Film. I first did 3D Glass Logos for 007, then I built out his signature Walther PPK firearm as a full X-ray model with all interior parts. The theory at the time was to use it in a Motion Graphics piece. That never came to fruition at the time however.

      Coincidentally a visiting Director at the agency, Todd Phillips saw the piece I did, and I got to sit down with him and discuss using that glass look for his current project Starsky and Hutch in my office at the workstation to show the 3D X-ray model I built. He had a great concept with an 8-Track player in the car that would shift over to glass for a Title credits sequence. Though that did not finish either, it was a great talk with a really great director as well. An experience I will remember.

 

      For each of the Glass title concepts I was given type set up for me by various Art Directors and Designers on the project. They provide the vector outline file, then I am off to build. As a 3D Visualization Artist, I see many ways to take an outline and make it a solid and dimensional. Some are sharp edged, some rounder, and some are destroyed as you see in this post. One single file can have a multitude of dimensional solution, and the posted images above show this.

 

      Glass itself as a 3D material, is very difficult to get legibility to work as a Title Logo, as it is entirely dependent on the environment. It reads in both dark and light, but darker environments with strong highlights is better. Also studio lighting with liquid reflections from light boxes and wands works best in CGI as in a studio.

 

        I did concepts where the logo was shattered apart and made from glass, and not just a static design to me but 'a frame in time' that crossed from 3D Illustration into a 3D Logo. I have a Screen grab showing the cutting object that I made a hand drawn vector with a little gap and thickness since in 3D, CG glass likes that space so reflections and refraction don't take forever to render.

 

     As a Behind the Art aspect to this post, I dropped a slew of screen grabs showing the base mesh and surface details without lighting or textures in a flat Clay material in 3DSmax. If you look closely you can see once the object was cut via a boolean, I slightly moved and rotated the shards a bit to indicate the motion fame caught in time. It also give the render a more realistic feel as all face planes are not parallel.

      Need my help on a project? My Linkedin Profile button on the right column has all my contact details in there along with in my experience section here, with links back to samples on this blog. 

    That Google search widget window up top in the Blog page is helpful for finding work going back to 2009.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

                                 Cheers, THOM

Project Review: STARZ 3D Logo and Motion Graphics Cards for new series 2008.

This is what the client chose as the final, a simple soft look to the materials with color bouce from the pink letters.

I did an all glass version of the logo and card here with clear glass.

 I also played around with pink glass as well.

 A version with pink glass up top and the Starz Red below on the thicker extruded logo.

 A did some alternate angles on he glass with pink neon inside versions as seen here with this low angled version.

 A birds Eye down shot on the above scene.

 A low front view of glass and neon with a lot of color bounce in this version sot he entire shot is pinker.

 The basic front view shot of the clear-glass with pink neon tubes inside the 3D type for this Starz 3D Motion Graphics style card.

Project Review

Starz 3D Logos and Motion Graphics Cards

for new series 2009.

Client: STARZ via RoseWorks.
Art Direction: Myself and Chris Arnold.
Project Date: October 2008. 

While I was in-house at The Cimarron Group, I did a few Motion Graphics Cards in 3D for Rose Works, an Entertainment Company ran by Chris Arnold that had offices in the building, and for todays post I am covering some work I did for a Starz Broadcast Cable job.

I was asked to help create some 3D cards for a new series on Stars that was to be marketed towards women, so the idea was to add a soft feminine feel to the cards for the announcements. I did a series of cards with lite soft ;links as well as rose glass and some glass on whites for a subtle look to the 3D.

A fun quick gig that took a few hours to deliver the style frames on then I produced the final cards.

Cheers, THOM

Project Review: 3D Neon Logo for Key Art for 'The House' 2017

The Neon tubes and clips were ultimately used for the final Key Art for The House 2017

The full render with the back tin plate[ removed for final]

Here is the base Quad Mesh for the 3D Logo. Note the reflection sphere behind the logo, to add details to both the glass objects , as well as the metal clips. 

 Early on I did an alternate with broken glass tubes and dented and gritty back tin.

If requested by the client I can provide an ambient/dirt pass to overlay the color pass to accentuate edges and intersections to add some light grit to the render.

A Close Up shot of the full 5K finish.

 A Color render at a low angle of the 3D Neon Sign I made for The House.

 The Quad Sub-D build with subdivision removed to see the base objects.

Close up details on the 3D Neon Sign design and build.

This Quad Mesh shot shows the inner glow object inside the outer glass tube, as well as the build for the retaining clips.

 This is a Distance Based 3D Mask, or Z-Depth pass I include so the team can do distance based editing on a pixel by pixel basis.

This first Color-Picker Mask I rendered out isolates the inner glow inside of the Neon Tubes, this is SMART 3D. 

This second Color-Picker Mask I rendered out isolates the outer glass of the Neon Tubes.

Here is a Wide format Key Art piece using the Neon Sign I made in 3D to assist the team at Leroy and Rose.

Project Review

3D Neon Logo for Key Art for

'The House'

2017

Client:New Line Cinema via Leroy and Rose Agency
Art Direction: Melchior Lamy
Project Date: March 2017

Back in the Spring I was asked to create a 3D Virtual Neon sign for the New Will Farrell film, The House. This is what I call a '3D-Assist', as the Posters and logo were already locked in by the client, and I was called in at Finish to help with a 3D version of the logo, as that is my expertise.

Most clients I have are limited in-house with 3D Designers and Artists, so they call me for these smaller jobs, which make up the bulk of my work.

For this one, I had to create all elements including all base vector splines, and as I have done dozens of 3D Neon signs, I have a procedure down to create them on time and on budget.

I was originally tasked with a clean version of the 3D Neon Sign, and a distressed alternate, with these delivered at a smaller size for approvals to save cost. A typical 3D Logo like this is first delivered at 1500 pixels wide to get approval for the larger final, which in this case were 5000 pixel wide final. I have rendered up to 18,000 pixels wide in the past.

When I build 3D Neon Signs now, I have some 'off the shelf' parts I have already made to reuse, like the glass clips and fasteners. I build the neon tubes themselves with two objects, an outer glass shell, that is not solid inside, but skinned with a shell command to get a thickness on the glass edges for proper reflection and refraction characteristics in the final render, as well as a second object, a glow object inside the glass at a smaller diameter representing the 'gas' inside the tube.

The final deliver is usually a multi-pass render with extra channels and masks to use, including a Z-Depth pass, and my Color-Picker layer to grab elements, include the glow inside the tube to add outer glows in post as needed by the Art Directors I deliver this too.

Neon is getting popular to use in Key Art, as I worked on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Despicable Me 3, and the Defenders all using 3D virtual Neon Signage, just in the last few months.

If you ever need a 3D-Assist, contact me for an estimate to make your logo into 3D Neon signage.

Cheers, THOM

Project Review: Aquaman Key Art Concepts and Finish April-July 2018

 

Aquaman 3D Key Art- My first concept design using the green and orange color palette. This one has the ribbed Icon with glass letters and an orange brushed metal DC badge. This was my favorite.

 

Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab showing the lighting set up. To get exact highlight placements it is really quick to put individual lights for the letters, as well as a global light set up as I have the Cebas Final Render rectangular lights for long light box like highlights above and below.

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader showing surface from the camera. This is the subdivided mesh with 4 iterations so a very mesh dense object to get the ribbing smooth.

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader showing surface on the Poly Base Mesh with no Sub-D added.

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader 3/4 front low angle, here you can see the displacement needed the 4 levels to get them smooth enough for render-time.

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader from behind shows the Icon is 2 sided since it was glass and needed better internal refraction's with more geometry.

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a second render with the type kerned in closer using all the same settings as above, with the highlight lights moved in to each letter.

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab with viewport materials and no edged faces. this lets me see the smoothing on the Icon to see if I needed more geometry before rendering, which was long.

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader showing surface for this tighter design.

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab with map and materials called out.

 

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- This brighter version is what they picked and I made the finish on the logo used.

 

 

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader showing the surface and lighting I used to get the even highlights from the top.

 

 

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader showing the big reflection sphere I used here to match the MGFX treatment.

 

 

 

Aquaman 3D Key Art- a Screen Grab in Clay shader showing a large off camera light box I used for reflections into the glass Icon. Letters were metal so this was to get more contrast in the icon as in a lighter space it needed that differentiation.

 

 

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- some early glass concepts for the icon. At this stage I was still on black with the dark feel of other DC films.

 

 

 

 Aquaman 3D Key Art- I loved this one very subtle highlights with higher contrast. I built this scene for Superman Returns years earlier in 2006 so I had the glass dialed in already.

 

 

 

Aquaman 3D Key Art- This became the finished material just did a night to day swap on the environment.

Project Review
Aquaman Key Art

Concepts and Finish April-July 2018
 

Client: Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc + DC Comics via BOND
Creative Direction: Patrick Dillon. 
Project Date:  April- June 2018.

     Today I can post the work I did for Patrick at BOND for DC's Aquaman. I love superhero films, and I have had the pleasure to work on many of them over my career. 

     Aquaman was introduced into the DC film universe with a cameo in Batman vs Superman Dawn of Justice back in 2016, so I was looking forward to working on Key Art Titles for the film in 2018. The character dates back to 1941 right before we officially entered WWII and appeared in the 50's and 60's, so he has been around a while. I am Gen-X so I grew up with both the comics, and the Saturday morning Cartoons. I remember the distinctive orange and green, being complimentary colors looking nice in his suit so you will see my paying respect to this color combo with my earlier concepts I have.

 

   I also posted Behind the Art images with some wire frames and Clay shader screen grabs showing the concept and final finish build out. I also show the displacement map I created for the custom designed ribbed texture in the glass Icon I developed in the early stages that was not picked for the final. It the film the gateway entrance uses this shape as well as the tips of the trident.

 
    I built out the Icon first, then the type was laid out for me by designers and Art Directors at L&R, and delivered in both a compact format and spread out and kerned very wide, which is what they ended up with. The 3D models I build all can be reused and rendered out at many different angles, finishes, and using displacement the geometry was built to be quads so I could add a real 3D texture to the work, or keep it smooth as glass.

 

    The first postings above are of the Key Art concepts, and this is where I had some creative room to build out what I saw as a nice dark and moody render of the logo on black. I was playing off of Jack Snyder's influence in this iteration of the DC universe in both Batman and Superman films, as both had a much darker look than where this film moved to. For this project, glass was an integral part of the designs in both versions. It played off water as a transparent texture.

     I did go to a bright look that is much whiter and smooth for the final that was picked. I did get the finish on the Key Art, and they used my 3D Logos and Icon for both the first and second films, along with all 3rd party marketing as well as at the films premiere with a 9000 pixel icon render that was almost 17 feet tall on Hollywood boulevard at the Chinese Theater.

     A cool side note is they reused the Logo and Icon for the sequel too. Often like in the X-Men films, each film gets a new Icon and title look as I did work on a number of them myself.

 

     I am back full time doing freelance as I hunt for a full-time place to work at, so if you need a bid for a 3D Illustration or 3D Logo, or a 3D Model feel free to contact me for a quote. I am open to Hourly gig's, Work Retainers, Part-time, and Full Time opportunities [ Open to relocation ] would be best. I have worked remote since 2009, so I am ready to help you.

                                 Cheers, THOM