Mondlicht Post #02
Zhanna Travkina
CEO & Co-Founder | dessed studio | Judge Vega Awards 2024 | Judge Promax Awards 2023 | Judge NY Festivals Advertising Awards 2022 | The One Club for Creativity | Member of Forbes Women Forum | Motion Design Awards Jury
New projects
Elevation // Motion Design Awards
Mondlicht Studios is proud to present "Elevation" – a two-minute video and a series of posters created by our team for Motion Design Awards. Everybody is thrilled to get a chance to contribute to the development of MDA and the motion design community.
Track Dedicated: McLaren P1 GTR animation
Since the small Brabham video was released, Mondlicht team thought about the next personal automotive project we would like to create in Unreal Engine. Finally, we chose our hero. Racing is impossible without a license, so we put the power - and beautiful McLaren P1 for a digital ride on Spa Franco...
Khabib Nurmagomedov // Official NFT collection
Mondlicht Studios was very inspired and honored to work on the NFT collection of unique digital cards for Khabib Nurmagomedov. The cards are collectibles issued to commemorate the end of the wrestler’s professional career. There are three series of cards announced: gold, platinum and diamond. Cards will be issued in limited series, and all unsold cards will be burnt.
Endless Luxury: liquid metal simulation
The jewelry creation process inspired our team to come up with an idea for a new project in Houdini. Looking at the interaction of metals, you see how a beautiful ring is being made. We chose the combination of precious gold and noble black to emphasize the idea of fashionable jewelry masterpieces.
Under the hood: Automotive X-Ray series
Staging technology as charming as the design is gaining popularity, thus getting more and more attention in advertising. Mondlicht Studios created these shots after researching how to beautifully display what is 'under the hood'.
smart: paper town
Mondlicht Studios decided to remember some good old childhood days and create a paper town. But instead of magical castles, we went for an urban environment and transferred a modern district into paper, including its stylish residents.
Mondlicht news
200 Best Digital Artists 2021
New edition of “200 Best Digital Artists” is finally here. Mondlicht team is very proud that “Altered Carbon”, “Alta Mar”, “Roboracer”, “Cursed Treasure” and “Mercedes-Benz EQC Black Edition” became a part of the book.
CG Garage: David Schaefer & Dmitriy Glazyrin
It was a great pleasure to become guests of CG Garage podcast and chat with Christopher Nichols about our pipeline, industry changes, our latest projects and useful tips.
Project study: “Track Dedicated: McLaren P1? GTR animation”
We were very happy to chat with 3dtotal and prepare a big project study about our latest Unreal Engine project and the workflow involved.
Mondlicht Studios | Endless Luxury: Liquid Metal Simulation
Our project “Endless Luxury” was published on Motiongrapher.
12 post-production tips to make your renders more impressive
Images right from render rarely look incredibly photorealistic. For that, you need to invest some time into post-production. To make it easier for you, we shared a bunch of tips on workflow and the exact tools we constantly use.
Animation sells
Animation is one of the longtime trends in the advertising industry. Lockdowns and the pandemic accelerated this process a lot, but the trend began much earlier. According to the survey published by Smart Insights in 2020, 92% of marketers believe that video marketing is one of the most efficient tools of marketing strategy. However, there are still many brands that hesitate you use videos for promotion. It's always hard to implement a new tool into an established working process. However, there are things that are worth all the inconveniences. And the animation is one of them.
Parlez-vous American?
It's vital for any international campaign and easily repurposed to other regions if needed. A visual story communicates the idea and the message of a brand much faster than any other content types and not dependent on language differences.
Abstract? Engaging!
Animation is also perfect for any abstract ideas which are hard to communicate. For example, when we were working on the video for Motion Design Awards, our task was to create a visual story for the award's main messages, including the international community, amount of judges, and the fundamental principles of MDA (work, talent, innovation).
We started to work on the project during the lockdown, so we also wanted to inspire and support the creative community. To achieve all that, we came up with an idea to create a stylized video with a clever plot and the main hero. Finally, we got a beautiful visual solution that emphasized the ideas we wanted to communicate and didn’t repel the viewer with an obvious advertising message.
Another good example is a product launch. When a brand wants to communicate the message through the story, the inspiration of a product, building a chain of associations which should become synonymous to the new “thing” to be advertised.
The shorter the better
An animation shouldn't always be a long video. Sometimes it's more than enough to create a 5-second piece to highlight the strongest sides of a product and attract a customer's attention. Our eyes are trained to recognize and focus on patterns and movement, so the chances that a customer will pay attention to a video commercial are much higher.
Be safe stay well
Last but not least is production. To create CGI animation, you don't need to organize photo shootings. Photo shooting has many advantages, including timing and efficiency, but it is still not that easy to plan such an event during the lockdown. However, even in the times of COVID-19, this solution is one of the best if the process doesn’t involve a big team.
Sometimes it's much cheaper to test different ideas or change some details during the CG production, especially if the briefing changed a lot. With a photo shooting, you'll have to gather a team, book a location, organize the process and endanger people just to get a video with a slightly different angle or background. In CG, you need to turn and adjust a camera in an already prepared scene. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
Sure, CG production also has its difficulties, and render time is only one of them. Working with a CG team, invest enough time in a schedule and pre-production to meet all the deadlines and foresee all possible complexities. Usually, a CG studio may offer options to solve the problem and produce the necessary content. The options will differ in timing, approach, amount of people involved in the task and the data you have. So, it's a good idea to involve a CG team during the pre-production stage to discuss all options and offer a client the best possible solution.
How much?
A lot depends on the duration and style of the video, but in general, there are several production steps in any animation project:
- Pre-Production
- Research & Development
- Animatic
- Modelling
- Styleframes
- Shading
- Lighting
- Rendering
- Compositing
- Sounddesign
If you want to create a video, but have no idea how much such production could cost, use this animation price guide to get a basic understanding.