Ikebana Mini-film

We challenged ourselves to create our very first 3d mini-film for our talk at Forward Festival in Hamburg.

ikebana_vimeo
This year we were asked to hold a speech at the Forward Festival in Hamburg, with a very special surprise for us: the talk had been sponsored by Maxon. 3D is still a pretty new thing for our studio, but we are so fascinated by its possibilities. So we take that as a challenge to see how we could turn our 2D style into something three-dimensional, that still is completely in line with our aesthetics and design & animation approach. We started from a very fun, sadly-rejected by a client, 2D illustration from a larger project and we tried to transform it in 3D. While we are pretty used to using 3D for more abstract shapes, we wanted to put our more figurative 3D skills to the test, creating some geometrical flowers and some fun, exaggerated characters.
ikebana_flowers
Altino
sphere_space
sphere_space
Poverino
ikebana_bts_flower_sketch
ikebana_bts_flower_2D
ikebana_3D flower_04
ikebana_3D flower_01

Our natural artistic language is still 2D, so one of the main challenges has been starting from 2D and coming up with a three dimensional physicality that can work both for design and animation. In our very visually-synthetic style, we tend to use abstraction, masks and continuous matching lines that really work well in 2D — but in 3D you can’t cheat with perspective views. Another challenge for a studio so focused on color choices like ours is how 3D is not only about color, but also about textures and materials — so we had to develop the right sensibility to create something in line with our aesthetics.

Breakdown
ikebana_white
Animation process
ikebana_2D flowers
2D reference
ikebana_characters jumping

We also had fun thinking about the possible applications of this animation visualizing it as part of a boarding screen or in some posters and Instagram stories.

UI
Posters

We had the chance to present this project at Forward Festival in Hamburg on July, 2nd. We'll share here some photos of the event soon!

ikebana_FF

Credits — Creative Direction Ilenia Notarangelo + Design & 3D Modelling Sofia Buti + 3D Design & Animation Matteo Ruffinengo + 2D Animation Lead Laurentiu Lunic + 2D Animation David Cubitt + Sound Design Fabrizio Martini