The popularity of what we might call CG magic realism continued to expand in 2019 as more creators and clients embraced the power of hyper-real 3D to transport viewers to surreal and abstract worlds with spellbinding clarity.

All these films were published in The Stash Permanent Collection during 2019 and are listed here in chronological order by the date of publication.
 
 

PAUSE “SIGNIFICANT OTHERNESS”
STASH 133

Lucia Gutkin, project manager at Onesal in Tokyo: “Pause Fest invited Onesal to participate in doing a Motion Response under the theme Intimate Futures. How do we build technology with humanity, how can we harness our creativity to imagine a better world?

“The main creative challenge of this project was how to express something as intimate as sexual intercourse in a subtle yet suggestive way.

“We did lots of viscoelastic fluid simulations for this film. These were very hard to keep stable, so we ended up redoing some many times or even discarding shots because of these problems.”
 
 

“USEFUL MACHINES”
STASH 133

Director Sebastian Dias at Molistudio in Buenos Aires: “‘Useful Machines’ is an in-house studio project. Once a year (sometimes more) we explore a concept and develop a piece without any limits and show a bit of molistudio’s personality.

“What if a machine was created not to give a technical solution, like a tool, but to be contemplated or even to be admired? Would this elevate the concept of ‘useful’ to a different place?

“There was a pretty big research phase about the behavior of certain mechanisms. We were really intrigued by what makes a movement pleasant to watch, so we focused our attention to understand that a bit better.”
 
 

DELOITTE “AT THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING”
STASH 134

Director Nahuel Salcedo at Onesal in Tokyo: “Our task was to illustrate new technologies and its impact on the world in an optimistic, inviting way, showing how decisions we make today, make tomorrow.

“Starting with a green dot, we did an abstract exploration of the evolution of the dot from different perspectives – transforming, expanding, and creating new meaning, yet always returning the circular green dot to start over.”
 
 

“SHROOOMS”
STASH 134

Maik Bluhm, director at COLORS AND THE KIDS in Berlin, Germany: “Shrooms is the latest in our series of self-initiated research projects and started with the question: what role will AI play in digital image creation and the future of computer-generated graphics.

“The main challenges were to first, align the computer’s creative vision with ours and then sort out the best results from the bulk of visuals that were generated.

“One night the simulations started to talk to us and we thought we had taken hallucinogenic mushrooms, but we were completely sober. So the title must have been commanded by the piece itself.”
 
 

IMAT UVE “MATERIAL EXPLORATION”
STASH 134

Vincent Schwenk, director in Hamburg, Germany: “The client came to us without a concept but with the specific requirement that we use the textures they created, scanned, and prepared for 3D production.

“Also they wanted us to present the textures in unexpected and unusual environments – disconnected from the usual portrayals.

“Our biggest challenge was to work on simulations outside the studio. We had an awesome team with Moritz Schwind from Entagma and Superdesigners based in Moscow.”
 
 

“TIDE”
STASH 135

Director Mark Lindner at Panoply in London: “This was a studio project where we wanted to create something beautiful to watch, calming to experience, and imbued a sense of restrained control.

“At Panoply we always put a strong emphasis on creative exploration followed by meticulous curation for a targeted direction. Often during these development stages, we generate concepts, designs, and techniques more suitable for an alternative direction or even a completely different project altogether.

“We believe there’s no such thing as a bad idea, just an inappropriate creative alignment.”
 
 

ECOBEE BRAND FILM
STASH 136

Shane Griffin, director at Tendril in Toronto: “Ecobee is a smart home company, and this year the company challenged itself to elevate its creative expression and introduce its latest innovation – the new ecobee SmartThermostat with voice control.

“We were approached to create a film to convey ecobee’s mission to make it easy and affordable for homeowners to reduce their environmental footprint while enhancing the way they experience comfort.

“A key creative challenge was in visualizing invisible forces (e.g. temperature, sound, comfort, etc.) and representing them in an abstract and artistic way, while conceptually tying them back to the narrative.”
 
 

OUT OF NOISE “WAS IST METAPHYSIK? PT. 5”
STASH 137

Director Michele Durazzi at Studio d_Arkroom in Italy: “This film is part of a larger series titled Was ist Metaphysik? which comes from a book by the German philosopher M. Heidegger that fascinated me.

“It was as if he had asked me the question. So I tried to answer from my point of view. It’s started like a simple experiment based on some minimalist rules, a kind of permanent subtraction operation in search of the essential.

“The main challenge has been to catch the poetic meaning in the balance between architecture and behavior of characters.”
 
 

BASF “AUTOMOTIVE TREND VISUALS”
STASH 137

Henrik Mauler, co-founder of foam Studio in Berlin: “This was the second iteration of the Automotive Trend Visuals for the Global Design toolkit that BASF’s Coating Division commissioned us to do.

“As a departure from the first round, they briefed us to have the image worlds rooted in reality rather than elements of abstraction.

“Other than that, they simply wanted us again to interpret their abstract and complex findings into concrete images of spaces and worlds.”
 
 

MWOVEN “THE WOVEN EXHIBITIONIST”
STASH 138

Peter Tomaszewicz, director in London: “The aim for this project was to create a short film for accessories designer Martina Spetlova and the launch of her new bags.

“This film was an art project in collaboration with the designer that would be used as supporting material for the introduction of the brand to the industry.

“Originally, the aim was to create a short film of around 20-30 seconds, but once we started working on it we wanted to push it further.”