THE GOAL
Our goal was to create an iTVC promoting a new line of products of instant cup noodles for Acecook Modern, including: Modern Xtreme Spicy Beef Flavour (Modern Xtreme Hương Vị Bò) and Modern Green chili Chicken Hotpot (Modern Gà Ớt Hiểm). The iTVC also features Sơn Tùng MTP as the ambassador for the brand and the new product line.
THE CHALLENGE
My role in this project was to do 2D & 3D VFX animations for just a few scenes only. Viewfinder Media took care of the production phase (shooting on set, working with the clients and director, etc.), then Mighty Stone and FatBeez handled the post-production phase, finalizing the compositing and color grading.
The sketch storyboard was provided by the director with very clear references as well. The references were used as guidance and a benchmark for us to follow through and try our best to achieve the closest result possible.
For the scenes promoting Modern Xtreme, the Mighty Stone team only took care of 2 scenes: the VFX of one scene where the talent experiences extreme heat when trying the noodle; and the transition of the cup noodles traveling through the hellfire environment. I only took care of the quality assurance for these 2 scenes.
For the scenes promoting Modern Chicken Chili hotpot, all the actions mostly took place in an imaginary roadside eatery, so with the provided initial idea from the director, the Mighty Stone team had to develop the final scene; therefore the team started illustrating the styleframe for the environment.
From the validated styleframe of the roadside eatery, I had to turn that 2D illustration into a 3D environment for animation later on, and this is where I was involved the most. The most challenging part was that all the faces of the objects that are visible in the frame had to be hand-drawn separately to achieve the closest effect, but since I didn’t know it at the beginning, it took me and the team a lot of time before we went back in the right direction. The scene was built in Blender.
Another challenging part in this sequence was the frame-by-frame character animation with a creatively dynamic action. The character had to be re-drawn based on the real footage that was shot on the set production, and the Mighty Stone team took care of the character design. For the frame-by-frame sequence, it was handled by another talented animator in the connection (Owen), and I only handled the quality assurance.
There are some other small scenes where it needed a frame-by-frame smoke sequence, so I did the rough line sketch while the team finished the rest of the coloring and styling. After all the animations were done, we sent out all the elements for the FatBeez team to do the final composition and rendering.
THE POST-MORTEM
This is the first time I was involved in a TVC/iTVC project that involved a high-profile brand ambassador and the professionals (director, producer, etc.) in the creative industry, therefore I have learned lots of technical skills to execute the scenes as well as the workflow and approaches to the project.
P/s: The project will have a surprise update in the upcoming future!
*All writing is my own - no AI used.