Guilherme Marcondes Crafts Worlds for British Gas

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Director Guilherme Marcondes recently completed a lovingly hand-crafted spot for British Gas with Hornet. Guilherme’s unique artistic and directorial vision – evident from his short-films and now increasing commissioned projects (which you can view on his website) – is evolving in exciting ways with each new project he releases.

The press release from Hornet reveals more about this particular spot:

The idea for this British Gas spot was to create a dreamlike environment, somewhere between day and night, a myriad of planets floating in a blend of outer space and open air. While most of the elements could have been digitally created, Guilherme wanted to maintain the warmth and real sense of the tactile environment. The technical details: the planets were built as practical scale models. Once built, stills and camera moves were shot of the planets. Sky and other animated elements were composited later to complete the look. The characters were animated as cut outs. The photographic caricatures of the people in the spot were precisely distorted to look real with a cartoony edge.

Check out some initial styleframes and making of photos on Guilherme’s Flickr page which give a welcome look behind the scenes. I discovered looking at the Flickr set that the blue planet was made of clay and had to be re-sculpted every frame to create the motion of the waves. You can tell alot of love went into this and it definitely pays off when seen in motion.

Since the client loved the end result, I hear there are plans to further explore the visual language and tone that Guilherme brought to life for this first spot. Bravo!

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