Play god :: December 2023 :: Newsletter
Wishing dear friends, clients, and collaborators a fantastic holiday season. Here is a final summary of our work for the year.
Hello Christmas
Telstra // The Monkeys // Retouching + CGI
We loved working on Telstra’s ‘Hello Christmas’ Campaign, blending a mix of location photography and CGI, it was right up our alley. We combined Dasher the lost reindeer into suburban Australia, complete with Telstra payphone and EA generated CGI foreground. Beautifully photographed by Toby Burrows, & CGI animals by Alt, for The Monkeys final Telstra campaign.
Hersheys
When you take fresh frozen fruit, coat it in Reeses and Hersheys chocolate and peanut butter and mix it up with Electric Arts’ unique blend of photogrammetry, photography, sculpting, amazing shader work and lighting you’ve got CGI taste appeal that jumps off the shelves. A fun project with our good friends Golden West Foods in the USA. Smiles and satisfied taste buds all round.
Wildbean ‘Drives you cravey’
Wild Bean // Photoplay // Retouching
Electric Art were thrilled to work with Michael Corridore who absolutely nailed the photography for this great concept from Ogilvy New Zealand. Showing the allure of Wild Bean’s offering that caters to every craving. The scenes and the foods were shot separately and we worked them into each of the environments. Beautifully managed by Ogilvy and Photoplay, looking forward to seeing it roll out on billboards and media across the country.
Praise ‘Freestylers’
Connecting Plots // Louis & Co // Retouching + Animation
It was great to once again work with Mat Baker & Louis & co who did a killer job capturing the talent and food for the fun and upbeat attitude of the Praise ‘Fridge Freestylers’ Campaign. We worked with the assets to also deliver an animation.
Feros Care ‘Grow Bold’ campaign
Feros Care // Jack Harlem // Retouching
It was great to work with Josh Kelly for the fun and quirky Feros Care ‘Not your typical aged care’ campaign, which highlights the company’s willingness to embrace the unique qualities of the individuals who make up the Feros Care aged carers.
Tassal Prawns’ Summer Campaign
Tassal // Louis & Co // Retouching
Mat Bakers photography, in collaboration with Louis and Co & BMF, captures the joyous diversity of prawn consumption, celebrating every unique way individuals savor these delectable treats, emphasising that with Tassal prawns, every bite is perfect.
Play god :: October 2023 Newsletter
Before we head into the home straight for 2023, we thought it was time to take a breath and show off some of our latest work, along with an update to our showreel. Enjoy!
Go to better sleep
40 Winks // Sam I Am // Retouching
Electric Art worked with Sam I AM and Billy Plummer on 40 Winks campaign in Australia, titled ‘Go to Better Sleep.’ The campaign addressed the nation’s sleep issues with the help of 6 characters who embodied the ‘unslept,’ beautifully photographed by Billy Plummer. They were seen online & on large format billboards around the country.
New Agency Identity
Joy Agency // CGI & Retouching
Electric Art masterfully crafted the new visual identity for Joy, seamlessly blending CGI and Retouching to convey the agency's multifaceted strengths in creative, media, integrated, and brand departments. The revitalized identity shows that every marketing idea and emotion has an underlying architecture, affirming Joy’s expertise in designing and building great campaigns.
Electric Art Showreel
Our new showreel proudly highlights some of Electric Art's latest and most innovative work.
American Family Insurance Brand campaign
Loupe Agency // Chris Sisarich // CGI & Retouching
It was a pleasure to work with Chris Sisarich for the American Family Insurance’s brand refresh campaign, seamlessly combining CGI and retouching expertise to deliver an impactful project based around the AFI logo.
The Seekret
Seek // Louis & Co // Retouching
Electric Art had a great time collaborating with Mat Baker and his series of fun & captivating images, retouching the campaign that unveiled “Better job matches than ever before”, bringing to life to life the fun and celebratory essence of Seek’s message.
Defy Today. Define Tomorrow.
Nike // Louis & Co // Retouching
We loved collaborating with Mat Baker & Louis & Co for Nike’s on the ‘Defy Today. Define Tomorrow’ campaign for the Philippine FIBA 2023 Basketball World Cup. We working closely with Mat across a great selection of shots to deliver a campaign that demonstrates the spirit and energy of this iconic brand.
Where You Wouldn’t Believe
Afterpay // Louis & Co // Retouching
Electric Art worked with talented photographer Mat Baker to deliver the ‘Afterpay where you wouldn’t believe’ campaign. The Troll and his bridge were integrated into the Australian environment for ads across digital and outdoor channels.
Play god : May 2023
Long overdue newsletter time from us here at Electric Art! We’ve been busy so it’s a great time to show some of our cool new work. Please get in touch to shoot the breeze or brief photography, retouching, CGI or animation projects.
Celebration Heart // Syneos Health Communications
Agency: Syneos Health Communications I SVP Group Creative Director: Ted Mendelson I VP Creative Director: Tarra Austin I VP Creative Director: Sean Welsh I VP Account Director: Kim McLaughlin I Group Art Director: Sasha Babarina I Art Supervisor: Patrick Fulmer I Senior Project Manager: Brittany Bethea I Senior Content Producer: Nikki Di Franco I Photographer: Chris Budgeon @ Photoplay Photography
Mars // Thinkerbell
We created the front facade of the world famous Mars Bar in CGI for Thinkerbell’s new campaign. Sculpting nougat in CGI is harder than in real life - but we think the results make it worthwhile. The delicious caramel is all a matter of lighting, and chocolate is best made broken to look realistic.
Special Group // Uber Eats
Another cool one from the team at Special Group with fun shots by Christopher Tovo. Uber Eats enlisted Kris and Kendall Jenner, Abbie Chatfield, Shannon Noll and The Poo to announce that Aussies can now get well, almost, almost anything on Uber Eats!
Elephant in a China Shop // DDB Health NY
Putting an Elephant in a china shop was always on our bucket list. Created entirely in CGI, the concept communicates this specific drug is both powerful on the disease state but very gentle on the patient. A pleasure to work on this idea and with a great agency! We’re proud of the work.
SVP, Creative Director: Bill Dunkle | VP, Associate Creative Director: Rad Dedic | Copy: Nikita Golitsyn | Account Group Supervisor: Lauren Alexander | VP, Account Supervisor: Catherine Siegrist | Group Project Supervisor: Alec Davidson | Associate Director of Production: Olga Zeltser | Sound Design: Pete Knese
Code 8 Studio // Zadina Dates
EA were commissioned to create a TVC for Zadina dates showcasing the premium and sophisticated product and its positioning as a perfect gift for connoisseurs from the heart of Arabic culture. Created entirely in CGI, yet still 100% photo real, EA created a vast range of CGI dates, plus palms, ribbons and gift boxes for the 30” TVC.
Managing Partner: Carlos El Khoury | Creative Director: ZorZi El Hoyek | Art Director: Suleiman Al Chair | Snr Account Manager: Sami Safadi
Hunt & Brew Launch // Sunday Gravy
EA comped a menagerie of fauna and flora imagery to create these delightful scenes reminiscent of old school National Geographic mags. We lit and shot the product to suit the scenes, added them in and applied a cool vintage film grade.
National Australia Bank // Six Black Pens
Six Black Pens approached EA with an urgent brief to create a stills and motion asset of a CGI tractor harvesting the NAB logo into an expansive realistic crop field. The campaign was created to suit various formats and targets NAB agricultural customers to raise awareness of the NAB Equipment Finance product.
Salvation Army // The General Store
What a joy to work with The General Store on this gorgeous feel good Christmas TVC where we see the ink on paper literally coming to life. The messaging encourages shoppers to consider purchasing preloved gifts from Salvos Stores this Christmas, to help not just people in need but also the planet.
Primo Stackers Socials // Primo End Frame // Generator United
Fun times creating these little back to school social assets for Primo Stackers and the end frame for Primo TVCs.
Play god : November 2022
This year has flown by! It’s been a while since our last newsletter, we hope you enjoy this little snap shot into the world of EA.
Speaking of worlds, we’ve had a play with some aerial world building, inspired by our long time tag line “Play god” - check them out.
In other news, we have welcomed the awesome Will MacKinnon to the EA team. Will is working in Business Development and if he hasn’t called you already, he probably will soon! Why not drop Will a line and have a chat about how we can collaborate!
NRMA Insurance // Bear Meets Eagle on Fire
Happy to be part of the awesome team on Bear Meets Eagle On Fire’s first national brand campaign for NRMA Insurance. The campaign builds on the iconic HELP positioning, with the idea ‘Until then we’ll be here’.
Arnott’s Shapes Fully Loaded // Saatchi & Saatchi via Prodigious
The brief was for a CGI taste-driven flavour explosion. We were able to control the amount of flavour on the biscuit but there was also a lot of work involved in making the base biscuit toasted, crispy ’n real. Little crumbs fly out as it shatters, the crispy lightness comes from the faithfully reproduced air bubbles.
Creative Group Head: Michael Barnfield | Art Directors: Alexandra Shiel & Patricia Casten |
Copywriter: Jessie Staszkiewicz | Agency Producer: Sophie Elliot
Lexus RX and Lexus NX // Publicis Groupe
Was a joy to work on this cool energetic campaign for the Lexus RX shot by the clever Chris Sisarich @ Louis & Co.
Bull in a China Shop // DDB Health NY
Electric Art once famously put a giraffe up a tree… so creating a bull in a china shop seemed very up our alley! Created entirely in CGI , the concept communicates this specific drug is both powerful on the disease state but very gentle on the patient. An epic effort from every department at EA plus a lovely collaborative creative process with the agency resulted in a beautifully crafted final animation.
SVP, Creative Director: Bill Dunkle | VP, Associate Creative Director: Rad Dedic | VP, Associate Creative Director Copy: Nikita Golitsyn | Account Group Supervisor: Lauren Alexander | VP, Account Supervisor: Catherine Siegrist | Group Project Supervisor: Alec Davidson | Associate Director of Production: Olga Zeltser | Sound Design: Pete Kneser
XXXX Rebrand // Thinkerbell
Rebranding one of the great Australian brands like XXXX is no mean feat. Thinkerbell came up with a great solution that retained the iconic brands’ visual legacy, but gave it a modern twist. Our task was split into two parts, firstly the brandmark that would work in still and motion pieces, and secondly a heroic, tasty schooner of the crisp XXXX lager in animated and still forms. Photoreal CGI beer, animated spritz and foam are not for the faint hearted, in the end we employed mostly photography for the still image and then replicated that in the animated versions. Cheers!
Head Creative Tinker: Nic Buckingham | Lead Producer Tinker: Nick Livingston | DOP:Felipe Neves | Beer Whisperer/Props/Art Department: Andy Cantrell | Stills Shoot: Ryan Harvey
Mars Honey Comb & Salted Caramel // Creaytive.
EA created this mouth watering hive for the launch of the delicious new Honeycomb & Salted Caramel Mars bar. It’s all CGI with taste appeal off the charts.
ECD: Chris Reay | Head of Design Realisation: Sam Holliss | Client Service Director: Chris Kent | Account Director: Angel McGregor
ubank // whiteGREY
“That’s how you money” was such a fun project and a lovely collaborative process.
Toby Burrows asked EA to partner with him to create these graphic CGI environments and headlines in the ubank brand colours. We comped in Toby’s delightfully sassy portraits into these cool little worlds. Love the end result, so fresh and fun.
ECD: Chad Mackenzie | CD: Ronojoy Ghosh | Agency Executive Producer: Sean Ascroft | Photographer: Toby Burrows @ The Kitchen
Snickers, Bounty & Twix ice Cream // Creaytive.
So happy to see our range of CGI Mars Ice cream assets finally roll out globally!
It's next level tricky to create realistic CGI ice cream but even harder to get it to look so yummy and light realistically in very high resolution. All the materials have to texturise, light and behave like the real life ones only better.
ECD: Chris Reay | Head of Design Realisation: Sam Holliss | Client Service Director: Chris Kent
Play god : April 2022
Here is an excerpt
Welcome to our first EA newsletter in a while! It’s been a busy 2022, setting up our new Leichhardt studio space, working on our updated website plus crafting CGI, motion and retouching projects for both local and overseas clients. We hope you enjoy this little glimpse into what we’ve been up to. Please drop us a line and let us know what you’ve been creating. We look forward to the opportunity to collaborate!
We are super excited to share our new website! Reels have also been updated, please check them out here.
Salted Caramel Tim Tam TVC // Saatchi & Saatchi
We happily joined forces with the old team again, Arnotts, Prodigious & Saatchis to create another lovely Tim Tam spot. It’s an honour to be trusted as the creator of the first CGI version of the iconic Aussie bikkie and all its ingredients. This one had the added challenge of starting with a beautiful ribbon of thick caramel followed by communicating the generous double choc coating on the biscuit. After much creative development we settled on a suspended river of chocolate followed by lovely whirlpool for the finished biscuit to emerge from. We avoided trendy tricks like time ramping to be able to show more of the biscuit travelling, instead preferring to allow the viewer time to take in the beautiful ingredients and the purely abstract world of its construction.
CD: Michael Barnfield | Creative Team: Ben De Klerk & Robert Bamford | Production Company: Prodigious | Prodigious Post-Production Producer: Amritha Rajavelu
Bull in a China Shop // DDB Health NY
How does one communicate that a new drug is both powerful, offering the efficacy that the patient's disease demands, yet is gentle on the patient at the same time? A bull in a china shop!! Creating, sculpting, texturing and animating CGI animals is considered “next level difficult” in the CGI world. Creating photoreal china shops to go with them is no easy task either, but in the end, these custom built animals and shops were a labour of love for our CGI, Retouching, and Compositing departments. We also produced an awesome animation to go along with these still images. Excited to share that too once it goes live. Check out the CGI build here.
SVP, Creative Director: Bill Dunkle | VP, Associate Creative Director: Rad Dedic | VP, Associate Creative Director Copy: Nikita Golitsyn | Account Group Supervisor: Lauren Alexander | VP, Account Supervisor: Catherine Siegrist | Group Project Supervisor: Alec Davidson | Associate Director of Production: Olga Zeltser
Mars Ice Cream // Creaytive.
Another great design from the grand team at Creaytive! The guys commissioned us to create a range of CGI Mars ice cream assets for global marketing purposes. We’ve developed a lot of fairly proprietary combinations of techniques over the years to be able to do this kind of work. It's next level tricky to create realistic CGI ice cream but even harder to get it to look so yummy and light realistically in very high resolution. All the materials have to texturise, light and behave like the real life ones but a lot better. Reality, beauty and taste appeal have to coexist harmoniously. An awesome team effort by the whole gang.
Exec Creative Director: Chris Reay | Head of Design Realisation: Sam Holliss | Client Service Director: Chris Kent
Electric Art Promo
“F@$k that looks like some kind of weird landscape” was the comment that turned “the little walnut that could” into a landscape and then back into a walnut again. Ultra real CGI food is part of our staple diet and when Simon Linge’s multicoloured walnut popped up it became the germ of an idea. Like some weird lichen-covered rock (perhaps from another planet) the fascinating ultra-macro-super-Hi-Rez world of realistic CGI food provided us inspiration to create this wistful windblown landscape and Play god yet again. Check out the whole project to see some of the crazy behind the scenes detail.
Calbee Chips // Creaytive.
We were tasked with creating various flavours of CGI crunchy crinkle cut potato chips dripping with melted cheese for Calbee Melts Potato Chips. We partnered up with Stephen Stewart who shot the mouth watering food to layer in-between the stacked chips. We pre-vised the stacks prior to the shoot to work out the optimum composition and retouching worked their magic layering all the components and finessing the deliciousness.
ECD: Chris Reay | Head of Design Realisation: Sam Holliss | Client Services Director: Christine Kent | Food Photography: Stephen Stewart | Photography Production: Geraldine Quinn
Chatime // Special Group
This was a fun quirky little retouching job for popular bubble tea franchise Chatime via the guys over Special Group. “Satisfy your Strange” is a digital, outdoor and AR immersive campaign starring seven crazy cool characters created by artist Sam Lyon and a range of super unique Chatime beverages. Electric Art comped the Characters with their drinks, finessing the deliciousness and embedded the QR codes. We rigged and animated the Cowboy and Udder Delight so that Unbnd could work their AR magic. Very cool seeing these interactive posters around town and instore.
CCOs: Julian Schreiber & Tom Martin | ECDs: Nils Eberhardt & Simon Gibson | Creatives: Jeff Seeff & Joel Grunstein | Agency Executive Producer: Sonia Ebrington | Integrated Producer: Emily Willis | Character CGI Artist/Animator: Sam Lyon Jellygummies | AR Build: Unbnd | Retouching & Animation of Cowboy & Udder Delight: Electric Art
Tamar Valley TVC // Creaytive.
Loved collaborating with Creaytive. Melbourne on our latest TVC project, created completely in CGI. The Tamar Valley brand design illustration was brought to life with a flowing river and a creamy yoghurt liquid sim waterfall. The results are 100% photo-real with incredible taste appeal!
ECD: Chris Reay | Creatives: Mark Andrews & Tim Holmes | Account Director: Angel McGregor | Finance & Operations: Viv Ringersma | Sound Design: Peter Kneser | Voice Over Talent: Jessica Tovey @ RMK Management | Voice Over Production: Dan Higson @ Smith & Western Sound