Creating a Distinctive CG Product Launch with Maxon One Clim Studio explains the elegant brand video they made for Helia.

When Barcelona-based Helia wanted to launch Elaia, the first luxury handbag collection by the high-end leather goods and accessories brand, they chose Clim Studio to create the launch video. Already known for their distinct voice and style, Clim Studio’s ability to elevate products with elegance and joy resonated with the Helia’s founder and set the stage for an ideal partnership.

With Cinema 4D and Redshift at the heart of the studio’s workflow, the team spent seven weeks crafting the Elaia video, as well as stunning and timeless brand identity for Helia.

We talked with Clim Studio’s Founder and Executive Creative Director Climent Canal (better known as Clim) and in-house CG Artist and Animator Witold Markeiwicz about their work with Helia. Here’s what they told us about the project, which allowed the team to be creative in interesting and challenging new ways.

Clim: Helia’s founder saw our work on Instagram and came directly to us. She explained that Helia is a new company owned by a woman and everything is designed by women for women. We liked the strength of having femininity at the core of their philosophy. Their brief was to create a 30-second CG animation to launch the collection online and that expanded to include a brand identity as well.

It was a special opportunity for many reasons. Helia is a new company, so this was an important moment and they trusted us to create something special. Creatively, we were asked to ‘present something that you are proud of, that you feel you can win awards with.’

Clim: From identity to animation, the development of the brand concept was most interesting to me. We work for a lot of technology brands, like Samsung, T-Mobile, Logitech, Spotify and Meta. Helia offered an opportunity to demonstrate a more holistic brand approach. We are a production and design-driven animation and mixed-media studio, and our capabilities are suited to wide-ranging industries, including fashion, retail, and luxury, which embrace a product-driven, artistic approach.

Clim: I always start by analyzing and identifying what’s important in a brand, especially what needs to be said by looking at a brand’s identity, product, philosophy and design aesthetics. Different conceptual threads give rise to images and ideas and, in this case, our references were limited to the Elaia handbag in different colors, their logo and their design philosophy. 

The design language and color choices of the Elaia bag were inspired by nature and flowers. We spent time with the founder exploring what Spanish heritage and coming from Barcelona means. For example, their creative director is from Barcelona, but their atelier is in Southern Spain. We believed their influences come from the Mediterranean, so we drew inspiration from a wider spectrum such as Greece, Italy and even North Africa. 

Typography was also important. We chose OT Abalos, a font that feels contemporary, luxurious, elegantly feminine and has an editorial look and feel. It also inspired the different scenarios in the animation, including a sea of flowers, a beach, a sun and the Spanish fan. I opted for an editorial approach to layout that affirms luxury values and presented one concept using style frames. Helia loved it from day one and were on board with everything.

Markeiwicz: From the get-go, we felt strongly about achieving beautiful results with our team without incorporating a big variety of software. The integration of Redshift in Cinema 4D allowed us to use a variety of high-poly scattered geometry, lighting setups and complex materials to achieve realistic results.

The biggest creative challenge was that the world we were creating needed to feel real. Not just the models and designs, but the lighting and materials too. Flowers were the focal point in many senses, so we needed to make sure we nailed the look of the moody, gentle light affecting them.

Redshift’s node editor was a huge help with creating the floral elements’ beautiful translucent petals. We were deeply focused on creating tactile materials as we wanted the motion and lighting scenarios to feel a bit dreamlike. Thanks to the speed and interactivity of Redshift, it was very easy to have interactive insight into Renderview and quickly find the right look and feel for all the elements.

We tried quite a few different ways to approach the sea of flowers part of the animation but, in the end, the most straightforward method turned out to work best. The entire scene is a plane with a displacer that uses an animated noise as the texture and we scattered hand-modeled flowers and plants on top of that using RS Matrix.

Markeiwicz:  It was important that the CG bag was indistinguishable from the real one and to do that we needed to be meticulous in our attention to detail. The bag consisted of smaller elements that fit each other and created a more complex shape. We modeled the entire bag using poly modeling techniques mixed with a wide range of generators and deformer objects. It was interesting to learn that the real bag is crafted in exactly the same way we approached the modeling process.

Clim: I’m very proud of the work. I think it has been beautifully conceived and the quality of execution and references to nature make it feel magical and joyful. The collection launched in September 2023 on Helia’s website and socials.

We also launched the film on our own channels and are very happy with the response. Mr Porter an established fashion brand in luxury menswear, saw it and asked us to create a holiday social campaign. So it’s been exciting to see our work for Helia already getting results for us.