Nathan Love gets fruity with Hawaiian punch.

Congrats to Joe and team at Nathan Love...
can't wait to see more of this!






I got the chance to have a little instant message discussion about the project... thought I would share that here..

How was the schedule for the Hawaiian puch job ?

pretty good.  character animation went really fast, but we spent more time on the VFX fruit smash in the middle ..
we did a one day shoot for that too

               high speed fruit cannon!

did they shoot digital? phantom ? red ?
and did you really have a high speed fruit cannon ?
how many takes till they got the smash to work ?

alexa [camera] for plates
and phantom to shoot the elements
yeah, it was crazy
oh man, we shot all day
but we did it individually , one fruit at a time
              and then composed the shot in post
              we shot liquid bladders exploding too
              had to microwave the pineapple for two hours to get it to explode

so was any of the liquid in the "smash" shot CG ?

 we did a lot of RnD, but in the end it was all live-action elements that we shot
oh, and the wave took some time to develop
 all cg, obviously

any special techniques for the wave,,, I'm guessing it was "rigged" with particle fx on top ?

exactly

 how was it developing a 3d version out of the 2D character.. was there a lot of back and forth with "Hawaiian Punch" or did they let you roll ?

well, they had already developed the "3d" look of the character
 before they came to us - for use on all their labels
but even then - LOTS of back and forth to nail his character

awesome, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule for this mini interview







I also got the chance to chat with the FX expert Santosh Sailesh from VRAM FX , who was responsible for the wave crests and splash wipe        http://www.vramfx.com/

so how was the wave done, and the foam? 

 so as for the wave..I had them animate the base geo
then did loads of particle passes
for the top of the wave I had a system emitting particles based on curvature 
and those particles emitted maya fluids which in turn emitted millions of   particles
              which was then rendered in real flow render kit.

              there is also a particle layer which is meshed in realflow.

              for the trails the same technique was used...
              initially stamping static point clouds to know where to emit from... 
              then these points emitted maya fluids which emiitted millions of particles
              rendered with real flow render kit.


              as for the camera front wipe ..that was all realflow
              quite a straightforward setup there

               the reason the other stuff were handled this way was
               so I could swap in geo cache and all particle passes can be iterated 
               in few hours and rendered overnight

can you tell us more about VRAM , and how you work with companies? 

Vram FX is a NY based "virtual" studio specializing in visual effects for feature film and television. Founded in 2008, Vram employs seasoned professionals from all over the world to tackle any problem that may arise in the FX production pipeline. We can act as your front line effects studio, helping you scale up to take on jobs that might  
              otherwise not seem feasible, or we can do the behind the scenes work that 
              allows  you to better utilize the talent on hand. 
               Either way Vram wants to be a part of your creative process and help create    
                groundbreaking content in this fast moving, ever changing industry.

so do you work on , or offsite ?

 we work offsite at our office in glorious astoria,queens

awesome!  Thanks for taking out the time for this mini-interview!







credits:

Production Company: Nathan Love
Executive Producer: James Braddock
Head of Production: Derrick Huang
Director: Joe Burrascano
Project Lead: Natasha Saenko
Design: Jim McKenzie
Character Modeling: James Chan
Additional Character Modeling: Bear Williams
Rigging Lead: Lukas Wadya
Additional Rigging and Cloth Dynamics: Amy Hay
Animation Leads: Dave Han and Doug Litos
Additional Animation: Goran Ognjanovic, Chang-Pei Wu
Environment/Prop Modeling and Texturing: James Chan, Danielle Charles
Lighting and Rendering Lead: Natasha Saenko
3D Compositing: Sohee Sohn
2D Compositing: Jeff Billon
Liquid and Particle FX: Santosh Sailesh
2D FX: Kristjan Zaklynsky
Motion Graphics: Jim McKenzie
VFX Supervisor: Eric Alba
Live-Action: Park Pictures
Director: Benzo Theodore
Executive Producer / Owner: Jackie Kelman Bisbee
Executive Producer / Head of Production: Dinah Rodriguez
Executive Producer: Justin Pollock
Producer: Ron Cosentino
Director of Photography: Jo Willems