The Royal Canadian Mint wanted to create a spot for traditional 16:9 aspect ratio screens such as broadcast and YouTube that could be repurposed for vertical and square social media posts. The script not only highlighted the gold coin, but also the fact that it is made from end to end in Canada using Canadian talent and resources.

I did all the creative direction, directed the spot, and did all the motion graphics and 3D animation. The two main tools I used were Autodesk Maya and Adobe After Effects.

Back in 2016 I recorded a quick vlog on location at the Toronto International Auto Show in one of the exhibits I designed for Kia. At Varipix I always used to do the main Kia wall. My main tool was Maxxon Cinema 4D as that was the 3D suite the studio chose.

The screen Kia uses is extremely wide. To complicate matters, depending on the location they add or remove panels that change the aspect ratio of the screen. Our solution was to create a 3D environment that the content could live in. Every year I would create this 3D tableau and then animate it into different states using C4Ds instancer and mograph toolset. The challenge in using C4D for production is always rendering.

I would always render my scene in multiple passes as it only existed to have video composited inside it. If you pay attention to the show loop, every 3D scene is a transition into another scene. By stacking these 3D transitions and time remapping the animations I was able to create some truly compelling visuals without having to render a bespoke animation for each asset.

The layouts were chosen to include 16:9 aspect ratio videos in their extremely wide screen. I treated the extremities of the screen as pure decoration as those panels would be removed in smaller locations. I developed this notion of simple transitions in a stack as rendering was complicated and time consuming, we needed a way to easily change things and swap assets out.

One thing I liked about Kia is they were very thoughtful on their shapes and colours. The basic gag was the same every year, but the shapes and designs were constantly evolving. The brand also focused on lifestyle. They would always provide me with beautiful abstract visuals in addition to all the shots of cars. It was some of the best agency work I’ve done that precisely targeted a specific demographic.

It’s kind of funny to me that the most data driven, quantitively effective videos I’ve worked on are straight up advertising.

A feature length documentary