The GAP Sound of Color – Black/White

“The GAP Sound of Color – Black/White” project was a creative challenge on several fronts. “Blind”, a Santa Monica, California, USA-based design studio/production company, was tasked with creating the visuals that interpret this esoteric idea with very little direction or time.

While incorporating such disparate art forms as shadow puppetry and 3D animation. MAXON’s CINEMA 4D paved the way to unify the visuals in this demanding project while meeting a dauntingly short deadline.

“Black/White” was part of a larger online promotion the GAP initiated to promote a recent clothing line. This project combined the music of upcoming recording artists with acclaimed directors to contribute the visuals, culminating in 5 different music videos. The GAP challenged the musicians and directors to "get people to think about color differently". Each of the 5 projects represented a different color or color combination.  Chris Do, Blinds’ President/Executive Creative Director, lead his team in the creation of the visuals for the “Black/White” song written and performed by Danish post-punk duo “The Raveonettes”.  The Raveonettes chose to explore the contrasts of these opposites with a soulful rhythmic song.

Do’s team visited the contrasts in the music by delving into good vs. evil to round out their take on “Black/White”.  “Most of our research on shadow puppets revealed a rather crude and raw animation style. We wanted to capture that essence, but add modern tools and techniques to give the piece more production value. We decided to integrate CINEMA 4D into both our design and animation pipeline to balance out the look of the piece,” says Do.

CINEMA 4D’s  intuitive light systems and material setup made rapid work of the prop and set creation process, which was necessary for the work flow of the project, as the designer handed off the models and designs to the animators to prep their scenes for animation.

Do elaborates, “After all of our assets were built, we were then left with the challenge of comping the dimensionless shot shadow puppets and elements into After Effects to create a scene. This left us with a very flat look, so it was up to MAXON to save the day. In a typically dimensionless world of shadows, we decided to introduce certain dimensional elements; architecture and set pieces built in CINEMA 4D to broaden the design scope.”

Do and his talented team completed the project in a little over two weeks, but not without some long nights and CINEMA 4D which sped up and smoothed out the pipeline. “Unlike other 3D programs, CINEMA 4D really delivers the best result in the least amount of time. That's a huge advantage considering the extremely tight turnaround we were working under. For our artists, this meant popping into the program and pumping out set pieces to incorporate dimension into our shadow based world,” says Do. His team consisted of 8 artists who found the work they created with CINEMA 4D resulted in lightning fast render speeds of 5 to 25 minutes, making this one of the smoothest parts of the overall project.

For "Black/White", their pipeline included Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Media Composer,  After Effects and Maya working alongside CINEMA 4D on both Macs and PCs.

“Our shop has been using CINEMA 4D for the past several years for all design related 3D work and for various animated projects. Whenever possible, we implement CINEMA 4D into our design pipeline. It really delivers a range of options to help us meet our design challenges. Its’ user friendly interface and fast, high quality renders gives us a range of aesthetic alternatives to tackle any type of design we are challenged with. Wherever we need to go, CINEMA 4D  gets us there.

It's really great to have a robust 3D program for the purely creative minded. CINEMA 4D is an intuitive program. There is no longer a barrier between the technical and the artistic with programs like the ones MAXON provides to working artists and designers.”