Hey Folks,
We`re proudly presenting our latest production. The Stop-Motion-CGI music-video “ME”, featuring the german gothic-novel-rock Band ASP.
Watch it here at Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8kvrYuQHOo
or in a much better quality by downloading it from the band`s page:
http://www.thetalesofasp.com/de/me.html
Four Companies joined together, to produce this eerie gothic tale about love, fear and death. (Magna Mana Production GmbH, Solid-Ground-Entertainment GmbH, Weirdoughmationfilms and Monozelle) Its a multi-technique production using traditional stop-motion animation with hand-build puppets mixed with full-cg environments. Most of the environments were generated and sculpted in Zbrush3, so its worth posting it here at Pixolator. First we would like to show some screenshots from the final movie, which was produced in HD-resolution (1920 X 1080).
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To get an idea, about what ASP is all about:
ASP love to explore the abyss of human emotion and imagination. The German quartet has been an extremely popular live band for years and not only in the gothic scene. A veritable magician on stage, charismatic frontman ASP captivates old and young alike, irrespective of social background, whether in small clubs or at large festivals. With a high-powered rock band at his side that intentionally focuses on their musical craft, ASP has total command of the stage from which he lures his audience into a world of emotional turmoil, holding it captive from the first note to the very last. Igniting a gothic rock explosion without like ASP easily make 10,000 passers-by stop in their tracks with their live performance as they demonstrated at the “Bochum Total” city festival 2005 in Germany. Passionate, poetic and 100 per cent rock ASP defy the self-imposed rules of a profit-driven industry and continue to personify what Indie is all about: authenticity. This earned ASP the respect and loyalty of music fans everywhere, who reward the band time and again by catapulting their releases into the official German charts. Amongst ASP’s chart-topping records are the hugely successful long-player “Aus der Tiefe”, the 2006 hit single “Ich bin ein wahrer Satan” and most recently their highly acclaimed double album “Requiembryo”. A more than respectable accomplishment considering they never benefited from the financial backing of a major label. Few bands can claim such a succession of hits in a similar period of existence. ASP simply have a gift for writing incredibly catchy hook lines you cannot get out of your head - no matter whether the song is a tragic ballad like “Und wir tanzten” or a goth punk anthem such as “Ich will brennen”. And the lyrics of the latter actually sum up the essence of ASP live perfectly: To the last breath!
Now, lets take a look into the production of “ME”.
ASP`s mastermind “Asp” himself, songwriter and author, wrote the basic script for the videoclip. In the first month of production, Magna Mana produced a 3D previsualisation of the whole music video with low-poly environments and some slightly modified standard-bipeds. This previs was the basis for the whole production.
Here are some previs shots:
ASP-Illustrator Ingo Römling startet working on the concept-designs for the main characters, while Jürgen Kling startet to build the socket and ball armatures for the stop-motion puppets. Compositing Supervisor Mark Dauth temporarily changed his duty and build some extraordinary miniature props out of wood and metal.
It was a great experience to use Zbrush3 for the environmental design and digital props. As you can see, without Zbrush, it wouldn`t have been possible to create the high polygonal organic structures, that are an essential element of the ASP-World. We used the Vray obj2vrmesh converter to render the high-res objects inside 3D Studio Max. The good thing about using those heavy objects directly is, that they render quite fast and with full detail. Jack Moik, mattepainter from Solid-Ground-Entertainement did a great job overpainting the rendered images with additional textures to increase the amount of visual detail. This balcony for example had 24 Million Polys and could easily be handled inside Zbrush3.
After rendering in full HD resolution, our compositing team used Digital Fusion 5.2 to combine the greenscreen footage with the cgi backgrounds. Several passes were used (diffuse, specular, depth, rgb-mask, just to name a few), to get full control of all parameters.
The final clip was edited in Velocity HD Pro and colorgraded with Speedgrade.
So, here are the credits:
„Me“ performed by
ASP • vocals | MATTHIAS AMBRÉ • guitar, programming | ANDREAS GROSS • bass | OLIVER HIMMIGHOFFEN • drums | Written by A. SPRENG & M. AMBRÉ | Published by EDITION FEELKLANG / HANSEATIC
„Me“ musicfilm
written by ASP | line producer & story consultant MATTHIAS AMBRÉ | fi lm editing, wardrobe & digital matte painting by JACK MOIK | puppet fabrication & stop-motion-animation by JÜRGEN KLING | puppet fabrication
assistant SUSIE JONES | compositing & miniature props by MARK DAUTH | character design & concept art by INGO RÖMLING | 3D modelling by VIKTOR KLASSEN & SEBASTIAN SCHMINKE | wardrobe assistance by CHRISTIANE RÖMER | additional design by MIRIAM WAGNER | color grading by FRANK VOGT | directed by & CGI by THOMAS KLIEBER
Hope you like it !
Visit us at:
http://www.magnamana.com
http://www.solid-ground-entertainment.com
http://www.weirdoughmation.de
http://www.monozelle.de
http://www.thetalesofasp.com
http://www.stop-mo-tec.de
