Project

Aardman Animations for IBM How Aardman Animations created a sleek race car promo to demonstrate the benefits of IBM’s cloud solutions…

THE BRIEF AND CONCEPT

Gavin Strange

When the folks at IBM saw a Chevrolet ad by Nathan Love, our sister studio in New York, they got in touch. IBM wanted to use a racing car as a metaphor in a promo for its cloud services. As they wanted to include graphical information within the animation, Joe Burrascano, executive creative director of Nathan Love, kindly recommended us.

In a nutshell, the brief was: “We want to show that in the race to the world of cloud computing our products won’t slow you down, won’t be unstable and will allow you to deliver better services to your customers.” They didn’t have a defined look and feel in mind, but wanted to communicate the stability, speed and smoothness of IBM cloud products. That was the perfect brief because it meant we could develop our own approach.

Early on, I imagined a 2D piece and built a mood reel based around the idea of very slick, smooth motion design. In a call with IBM it quickly became clear that they wanted 3D cars, and that got me even more excited. I dashed home, where I have a Cinema 4D set-up, found a free model of a supercar to use as a base and started experimenting with materials and lighting techniques.

The inspiration was two-fold. Firstly, movies like Tron Legacy, Oblivion, Akira, Speed Racer and the work of GMUNK and Ash Thorp. Futuristic and sleek worlds where minimalism and glowing lights go hand in hand. The second strand was real-world hypercars – vehicles that cost millions and go crazy fast! When I’d developed the concepts, I handed them over to Nathan Gutteridge and our killer team of CG modellers to start on the proper modelling and rigging for the piece.