Fremont, CA – December 06, 2016 - Blackmagic Design today announced that Fukuoka-based production company KOO-KI produced a new set of commercials for Japanese department store giant Marui using Fusion Studio.

 

KOO-KI consists of directors, CG directors, producers and CG/Motion graphic designers and offers planning, direction and production for TV commercials, campaigns, TV dramas, TV animation and apps. Their award winning work includes CG work for the “Universe of Nikon” museum, the opening movie for KONAMI’s new baseball game and the planning and direction of the award winning drama “Mentai Piriri.”

 

One of the acclaimed projects that KOO-KI has produced is the new TV commercial for Marui’s seasonal campaign sale. Marui is a major Japanese retail company which operates a chain of department stores in cities throughout Japan. The commercial was created in full 3DCG and KOO-KI used Fusion Studio as the main VFX software for the production.

 

The concept of the commercial is “a fantasy for grown ups.” They aimed to express the excitement of shopping in their visual work, depicting people living in a fantastic town enjoying shopping in a vivid and lively manner. All composition in the commercial was done in Fusion Studio.

 

For the project, KOO-KI’s director Tatsushi Momen and producer Masami Shimamura worked with animation director and Fusion artist Vito LaManna, who works out of Germany and Japan. Vito, a longtime Fusion user and creator of the Fusion tutorial site “Con-fusion,” handled all creative works for the project.

 

“When I started doing CGI, there were not many artists in the industry. So I had to do everything, such as modeling, animation, composition, storyboarding, animatics, etc. So, for this Marui commercial, I did character design and modeling as well as compositing. But my passion is in composition,“ said Vito.

 

Being a talented painter, Vito uses Fusion as if he paints with Fusion, and uses Fusion’s mask feature’s extensively. “For this project I used many masks. Mask is very important for me as I want to adjust as many objects as possible to create a nice harmony in a scene. Also, the volume mask tool is very powerful. It allows you to create masks in a 3D space. It’s so fast. I don’t have to re-render out these masks. It’s very efficient. And I can even copy some masks and combine them to create new masks!”

 

Vito continued: “The challenge with this commercial was to make a flat looking image look deep, powerful and pleasing to the eye. Even the lighting or shading artists did not have enough time to make a good foundation. But Fusion gave me the tools to get it done. Fusion gave me the ability to save so many shots.

 

“For example the bus in an outside scene, the original render was very flat and boring, so I added fog and extra light using many masks and made the bus pop out more. Also, for the characters in the commercial, I applied horizontal and vertical gradient to their hair to add more texture. By doing so, it gave more volume to the hair. I also did a lot of color correction for this commercial to create vibrant atmosphere. I could do these all in composition, not render out from the 3D software!”

 

Vito also said that the Displace 3D tool was very useful, especially when he wanted to place an object in between other objects. “Displace 3D tool can use the World Position Pass to displace the scene, so it creates a 3D presentation of the original 3D scene. The simple plane becomes 3D and lets me work in a 3D space. I needed to add an object in a scene where a girl is walking, but I did not want to re-render the whole thing. I could just place it precisely in the scene in 3D space, keeping the relation to the depth of each object.

 

“Fusion allows me to be creative, without taking me out of the creative flow. You don’t have to think much, you can just do. I like to be in this state. I’ve used other software and those are too technical or throw up many errors, so the flow always stops somewhere. Fusion keeps me in the creative flow for the longest time, so it is really fast working using Fusion,” Vito said.

 

Press Photography

Product photos of Fusion Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

 

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world's highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design's DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company's Emmyâ„¢ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.