As more directors and designers added powerful and affordable 3D tools to their arsenal in 2020, the scope and quality of work continued to mature – finding broader acceptance in commercial work and exhibiting a wider emotional range.

These seven films represent what we believe is a continuing golden age for CG and some of the most exciting proponents of the genre we call 3D Style, which may be loosely defined as a form of digital magic realism fueled by vigorous experimentation.

All films were published in The Stash Permanent Collection during 2020 and are listed here in chronological order by the date of publication.
 
 
“0% FOOD” (above)
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Director Lukas Vojir at XK Studio in London, UK: “This film started as an isolated Instagram piece but developed into a full-blown research project into future of food

“I wanted to explore the visual aspect of the food but the driving force was the ‘mechanics’ of these different dishes.”
 
 
 

PURPLE “EVOLUTION OF SLEEP”
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Matt Winkel, executive producer at ManvsMachine in Los Angeles: A leader in the bed in a box category, Purple realized the only thing they had in common with their competitors was their delivery system.

So we were charged with establishing their premium yet playful offering through highlighting their true product innovation, the Purple® Grid, and its benefits: pressure relief, durability, ventilation, instant response, no motion transfer, and blissful rest.”
 
 
 

“LETTER, LOTUS, AND LEGEND”
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Ilya Perevedentsev and Valeriy Lunchuk, owners at superdesigners studio in Moscow: “We were always eager to do some work in the fashion industry, to experiment with fabrics, clothing, accessories and connect it with art storytelling. However, we couldn’t find any projects of this kind.

“I suggested creating a video to the founder of a Kiev techwear brand I liked. Unfortunately, we didn’t go any farther than sketches. And that was when we realized we need to carry out such a creative project where we play the role of the client.”
 
 
 

“THE SHREWD AWAKENING”
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Director/animator Peter Tomaszewicz in London: “This was a personal project. We wanted to create something fun but also design-worthy. There are a lot of elements of surrealistic movements which are the main keys to our body of work.

“From the beginning, Christiana and I had a general idea of the style, look and feel that we wanted to follow. The main challenge was to make sure there was a nice flow between the scenes without having to compromise on the craziness of the designs.”
 
 
 

IHUMAN “A.I AWAKENING”
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Theodor Groeneboom, animator at Rebel Unit in Bergen, Norway: “We were commissioned to create an abstract visualization of the awakening of a fictional AI character for Tonje Hessen-Schei’s documentary iHuman.

“The concepts around AI (AGI and superintelligence) are high concepts that have been explored in many ways. Often in terms of anthropomorphizing the machine as a human or human-like with robotic features. We wanted to still have the cold technical and mechanical feel, but introduce human-like shapes into the network of lines and nodes.”
 
 
 

MICROSOFT “FLUENT UI”
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Directors Vincent Schwenk and Vitaly Grossmann in Hamburg, Germany: “Our task was to integrate a selection of Microsoft UI elements into different worlds and show their attributes as playful but also technical. Our central theme was Design to Code.

“One challenge was to find a visual language, especially a perfect setting to implement the Microsoft UI Design. The other challenge was to find a good metaphor for the UI elements.”
 
 
 

DERMOT KENNEDY “GIANTS”
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Director Oriol Puig at Trizz in Barcelona: “We started the process by speaking to Dermot, gaining insight into the inner meaning of his lyrics, for example: change, what we used to be, which we can only look back on, time moves on inexorably.

“This got me thinking. What if there was a way to visualize these changes in nature, visual emotional representations of change and evolution? Sculptural objects, man-made or natural, doesn’t matter.”