The explosion of visual experimentation caused by the continued democratization of 3D animation and rendering tools is arguably the most exciting design trend of this decade. These seven projects demonstrate just how spectacular the results can be.

All these films were published in The Stash Permanent Collection during 2018 and are listed here in chronological order by the date of publication.
 
 

VELCRO BRAND “HOOK & LOOP”
Brand film :53
STASH 130

Lukas Vojir, director in London: “Our brief was to tell the story behind the VELCRO® Brand fasteners in a mesmerizing way. We wanted to stay true to the original story behind the brand, but tell it in a fresh new way.

“With the burr plant at its core, the film explores one of the most notorious examples of biomimicry, drawing the parallels between the technology and the nature that inspired it.

“The biggest challenge was creating the right look and motion for the burr and making the hook and loop fasteners actually physically work using physics simulations.”
 
 

IBM “THINK”
Brand films x 7
STASH 131

IBM’s inaugural Think conference launched in Las Vegas in 2018 complete with this ambitious and flexible branding scheme.

Helge Kiehl, co-founder at foam Studio: “By manipulating different forms within the confines of the word ‘think’, we magnified the concepts of intelligent self-organizing systems and matter being shaped by information flows.

“The ‘Think’ visuals and animations were used in the entire communication and physical appearance of the conference, as well as for illustrating visuals within the talks, on the conference website, and across social media platforms.”
 
 

“FAZUA”
Brand film
STASH 131

Director Vincent Schwenk in Hamburg, Germany: “The German ebike engine producer Fazua needed a new video for the Eurobike fair.

“They gave me the CAD files of their engine and told me to be creative with it. This was really the nicest project brief I ever had.

“The biggest challenge was time, we only had two weeks until the fair started. So we had to quickly find solutions how to abstractly show the use of the engine.”
 
 

“FLOW”
Short film
STASH 131

CG artist Nobutaka Kitahara in Tokyo: “I wanted to express the micro and macro world feeling that matched beautiful colors with beautiful motion. I made progress little by little and did not worry about a production schedule.

“I wanted to add not only a simple fluid simulation but also an artificial element unique to CG. Many points on the fluid were done in Houdini flip [fluid simulation tools].

“Reducing simulation and rendering time was a challenge. I suffer from cancer and the rest of my life is short. I would like to produce as many works as possible until I die.”
 
 

“LANDMARK”
Short film
STASH 132

Victor Bonafonte, director at Beauty and the Bit in Madrid, Spain: “Landmark was conceived as a non-commissioned project to try breaking the barrier between architectural animation and telling a cinematographic story.

“The good thing about being your own client is also the main curse: there is a giant blank canvas to fill, so possibilities are infinite.

“This is our first serious animation project, so we faced a lot of technical difficulties. Nevertheless, if you are an organized studio you´ll get over it in the end.”
 
 

“GOODBYE DESIGN”
Short Film
STASH 132

Miki Nemcek, director/designer/animator in Prague: “The aim was to express my feelings for an extraordinary minimalistic design of this older era. I just needed to get it out of my system in order to free my brain for other projects.

“The whole clip should feel a bit nostalgic and retro, but not completely old school.

“The main creative challenge was the high number of original scenes. Exactly 18. These had to be modeled from scratch, individually textured and animated. And all of it had to hold my high standard of quality 3D. For one person it was pretty challenging.
 
 

OPPO “FIND X”
Brand film
STASH 132

Somei, director at SOMEI DESIGN in Shanghai: “This time my collaboration with OPPO was more in-depth, they showed me the prototype, we were discussing early on how to present the product.

“Because the Find series is a completely different high-end product line from the R series, and it’s been out of service for four years, this time they hoped the new phone will have a sense of ‘the return of the King.’

“I think the biggest challenge one is to make it look ‘expensive’, as the previous videos for OPPO are always full of colors and motions, but this time we should slow it down, make it majestic.”