During year 2005-2008, I had chances to work with one of the most famous film director in Thailand, Wisit Sasanatieng who received many international film awards around the globe including Dragons and Tigers Awards from Vancouver International Film Festival in year 2000. Most of his works present very strong visual impact in a very unique style. I and Blu Fairy team had worked with him in various types of projects. We started with a TV commercial for Thailand's most famous suki-yaki restaurant called "MK" in 2005. He was the creative and gave me the opportunity to co-direct this TVC called "MK-MAN". I got a brief from him and started designing characters and the environment. I also did storyboard, animatic, and animation. After we got approval from the clients, then the production process began. The clients really loved Pixar's The Incredible type of character and style so we had to find some kind of solution to meet their expectation but not totally copy the reference. Here it is the result.
MK-MAN Television Commercial
We spent 3 months on the whole process from sketch design to finished product. It was a great time to work with Wisit on this project. Nothing to be hurry. The clients was not so bad at all. We had room to think and try more things in term of design and animation. I am very happy in the final result. Here are the breakdown of all processes to share with you.
MK MAN working processes
After MK MAN not too long, I had a chance to work with Wisit again on another TVC. I and Blu Fairy had to create a book character that represent knowledge, called "BookaMan". In this TVC I worked mostly on supervising and client relation but anyhow I still wanted to animate the main character too. It was a fun job because in the middle of project, the director had changed from Wisit to Tom-Pen-ak Ratanarueng -- another Thailand famous film direct who has totally different style from Wisit. However working with Pen-ak was stunning. He had so much power and vision to control his film into his direction with ease. In the shooting location, I had so much fun working with him and his team. However he gave me freedom to work on the character as I like. He accepted any input from me and Blu Fairy team quiet freely. It was one of the happiest project that I had ever done.
"BookaMan" TVC for Reading for life project
In year 2006, Wisit faxed me a brief of new TVC board call "Baby Cancer"
It was a rough sketch but clearly communicated his idea of what will happen in the story line. I and Blu Fairy team started with character design and looked-development for presenting to client with in 2 weeks. Then we did some adjustment and finalized the key visual before we shot the film.
First design for the baby cancer
Final model of the baby cancer
Final Look-Development for Baby Cancer
We shot some lighting references during the shooting session so that we can use them for rendering purposes.
After we shot all BG plates I and Blu Fairy team did camera tracking, created animation, lighting, rendering, and compositing into BG plates to the cutting approval purpose. Here is the result.
"Baby Cancer" TVC for a Hospital
In this TVC we use simple muscle system rig created by our TD, Aaron Smitd, in order to get muscle movement on the baby caner. Also we did the final color grading after we done with all animation and compositing process. Here is the muscle system and comparison between non-color grading and final color grading. Color Grading made film feel much more rich in term of look and feel.
Muscle System had been created for this project.
Breakdown process from animation to compositing all rendering passes
Color Grading made the film look much better.
Music Video is another type of job that I and Blu Fairy enjoyed. We and Wisit worked together on a music video project in late 2006 to early 2007. This time was pretty much on creativity and made it happen. It was not too much of client requirement or selling any product. We went far beyond the commercialized limitation. The artist whom we make music video for is Petch Osathanugrah who was the most modern electro-pop musician in Thailand during 80's. He is also a success business man. The song called "Fill Me" is one of his new album "Let's Talk About Love". Wisit subjected this MV to make fantasy idea come true life. I and Blu Fairy team were very excited to get this opportunity to full fill Wisit's imagination and visualized it in to the film. We created 'mini Petch' a plastic doll based on Petch himself characterize for the singing sequences. Also created a baby doll (head-replacement on real doll shot footage) who is a close friend of a girl in the story. At the end of the MV we also created plants form into the baby doll to remind her about love in childhood. We used Paint Effects in Maya to create such effect.
"Fill Me" Music Video for Petch Osathanugrah
Here is behind the scene of head replacement shots in this MV.
Behind the scene : Fill Me
There are more projects that I worked with Wisit. I will add more soon. Thanks for watching.
