“Meet Google Pixelbook, the high performance Chromebook. Everything you love about Google, for work and play. It's the first laptop with Google Assistant built in, so you'll be able to get more done faster and smarter. “

This was the fastest turnaround for a project that I have ever worked on. The shoot was going on less than two weeks before the product needed to be launched. The team worked long, hard hours to get this out on time. My main contribution was working as the look development and lighting artist for the product shot at the end of the spot. The project was so secretive that we had to keep the sample Pixelbook we were using for reference locked in a safe. Figuring out how to make the product look good against the all white background was a challenge. Usually, for metallic products you need shiny specular hits that travel along the edges and surfaces to help the product look more realistic. But if you have too many white highlights across a white background the product will look fake and get lost. A strong white background is a quintessential part of the Google brand so I had to get creative to find solutions for the look. I ended up adding hints of gold shade into the specular and main shader for the chrome areas of the Pixelbook to make the product and highlights standout from the background. I also jumped in to help the compositing and matte painting artists by making to scale matchmove geometry for the skating shot. I also modeled details onto the stage props for the stadium matte painting, like the handles and screens over the sound speakers. This was a challenging spot for the time constraints but I am very happy I was able to be a contributing member of the team behind this spot.

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For this commercial I worked mainly as a lighting artist. The project was lit in Houdini's Mantra. Its always a fun challenge to light in Houdini and to light fur. Catching the rim light with just enough subtlety can make all the difference on a fur shot. My shots were the two exterior shots, on Bearly Adapting, where the papa bear is scratching his back on the column. And then the long walking shot and the two close ups for the sports spot. The most challenging part was getting the CG column to blend in with the existing column. I had to go back and model in some smoother edges and curves to make the column model more believable.

I had a lot of creative, technical direction, and design control over this project which was produced at Spacejunk. I created the cloud volumes in Houdini with a brain model and volume node and varying levels of noise. I also created evolving clouds for the flyby opening shot. In order to create the sugar strands while also being cognizant of limited render times and budget I decided to implement a strategy I learned in games. I created transparent planes and drew pink hair strands then filled the volume exterior space with these planes. The end result gave breakup of the volumes without increasing render times.

Director Brian Finney