Aetuts+ Weekend Workshop #2 – “Pimp My Planet”

We’ve recently started a new weekly community project where we’ll be posting a video created by one of our wonderful readers, then ask you all to offer constructive feedback on the work. It’s a great way to learn more about video, express your viewpoint, and have your own content critiqued! Submit your own videos at the bottom.

Quick Ground Rules

1. Play nice! We’ve deliberately chosen videos that aren’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
2. Feel free to offer any type of advice – movement, lighting, color, pacing, etc.
3. You can also link to videos that you feel offer a great example of this type of content done exceptionally well.

Without further ado, here is this week’s candidate for critique!

“Pimp My Planet”

Story Behind the Project

Actually there wasn’t really a client. Pimp my Planet was made for an exhibition that was held in the Netherlands in the summer of 2009. At the invitation of art institutes MU and KOP, twenty promising
artists and designers from the Netherlands showed new work in two groups both in Eindhoven and in
Breda.

We spend about a month working on the animation with two people (Ton Meijdam and Thom Snels /
founders of Studio Smack) We used a hi-res graphic of an earth map. We cut out all the countries in
photoshop (190+ layers!) and animated the layers separately in different comps in After Effects. Then
we used ccSphere on the comps and started animating the globe in 3D space. When all scene’s were
rendered we filmed the god-figure in our studio against a white wall. The raw footage was imported
in After Effects and slightly adjusted. When that looked right we added a light wrap to it. Finally we
polished all the rendered scenes with venetian blinds, color correction, grain and Videocopilot’s optical
flares. The flares were added using the original comps with ccSphere and some expressions as a
guide for the position of the flare in the pre-rendered scenes.

The idea for the film comes from the notion that some countries are shaped in a way that they look like they could have been manipulated or designed.

The idea for the film comes from the notion that some countries are shaped in a way that they look
like they could have been manipulated or designed. For example: Italy, a country that is well know for
its fashion design, is shaped like a boot. But what if that boot needed an upgrade? That lead to the
following statement:

We live in a time where everything or everyone can be upgraded or ‘pimped’. After the worldwide
acceptance of plastic surgery, it was time to subject our worldly possessions (Pimp my Ride) and
digital identities (Facebook) to an aesthetical and/or functional upgrade. So it’s likely that eventually
everything will be pimp-able. Even our own planet.

We hope you enjoy our short animated film in which the possibilities of playing God are explored. Redesigning the planet according to your ideals or aesthetic values. What are the consequences of your actions?

Please let us know what you think in the comments – how would you have approached this project or done things differently?