Maintaining a fine balance between elegant and edgy, London-based designer/director Pandayoghurt (aka Douglas Bowden) elevates this work for Motorola above the ongoing neck-deep tide of CG phone films.

Douglas Bowden: “The ‘Marble Elegance’ project is an introduction to the Motorola Edge 50, a phone that merges luxury with cutting-edge technology. One of the challenges on this project was how to take a static solid object like marble and animate it in ways that would effectively contribute to the narrative.

“The marble needed to move in a way that would enhance the storytelling rather than distract from it. The challenge was in finding the right balance between subtlety and dynamism; too much exaggeration could render the marble’s movements unnatural, undermining its luxurious connotations.
 

“The marble needed to move in a way that would enhance the storytelling rather than distract from it. The challenge was in finding the right balance between subtlety and dynamism.”

 
“We aimed for the marble to feel alive, almost as if it were responding to the sleekness of the Edge 50. This required numerous iterations to ensure every movement conveyed sophistication while complementing the phone’s features.

“The reliance on light and shadow to enhance the visual narrative also brought its own set of difficulties. Managing the lighting setup was a significant task as each light source needed to highlight specific aspects of the phone while also enhancing the marble’s textural qualities.

“Timing the brightness levels with the transitions in the animation added another layer of complexity; ensuring the illumination shifted seamlessly to match the mood and pace of the story. This involved constant tweaking and fine-tuning to achieve a balance where the lighting elevated the overall aesthetic without overpowering the scene.”
 
 

 
Client: Motorola

Director/animator: Douglas Bowden