We recreated the video game shots for this video.  And it was a first for all of us here at Gloo to shoot a deer.  The toughest part was capturing it first so we could attach the Motion Capture trackers.  After that we just set if free and then shot it.  This method provided the best simulation of a deer collapsing after being shot.

Just kidding! We created all of the deer in 3D using Maya, animated them and then composited them into the video game using After Effects. Sounds a lot easier right?

Our responsibilities didn't go much further than some titles and a few Rotten Tomatoes pages. So we won't stand here and gloat or anything... ahem.

BRAAWWWWHHHHPPPP!!!!!

HA HA!  I just zapped you with a Zoo Horn!  Hmmm...not as effective in print.

Anyhoo, here's a great College Humor video we worked on.  Animal cruelty can be so hilarious sometimes!  (Seriously though, no animals were actually subjected to the Zoo Horn.  Please don't send us hate mail.)

Our resident geniuses here created all the graphical elements for this one including the 3D horn.   My personal favourite is the addition of a rock flying past a monkey at the 39 second mark.  When a monkey simply turning his head gets turned into comedy gold, that is truly digital magic my friend!  Enjoy!

LIfe has become really difficult for me lately.  Why?  Because I haven't seen Inception yet!  Every single website I go to has some kind of posting or video on it or explaining it and I can't read or watch any of it because it will ruin the movie for me.  I've been uninvited to group lunches because everyone wants to talk about it.  

So, it goes without saying that I haven't actually watched our latest College Humor video yet.  I hear it's funny and we did the gunshots and blood splatters for it, but I keep having to run out of the room chanting "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA" and sticking my fingers in my ears before I hear anything more about it. 

There may be spoilers, so watch with caution...

BP has some serious PR work to do after their series of blunders and gaffes.  So why not do what Domino's Pizza did and rebrand their image?

For this video, we had to make a cheesy TV news type animation showing the oil spill and BP's attempts at fixing it.  It's cheesy, real cheesy.

For Turtle Race: Episode 2 (featuring Brian Baumgartner of "The Office"), we actually originally did 2 sets of graphics, but an editing decision sadly cut one of them out.  The one that stayed though is probably the best part of the video though.  Its at the very end.  We had to make a commercial for a fake energy drink called Psycho Turtle that parodies the Old Spice commercials from a while back.  Not the super popular new ones with the "Hello ladies" suave handsome guy, but the ones from April 2010 with Terry Crews screaming at the camera.  If our parody commercial gives you a seizure... sorry about that.

Bros Icing Bros.  Some people know what I'm talking about, others need an explanation.  So, the quick gist of it is that its kind of a frat-boy like game that dudes who love to get wasted all the time do when they're sober... and want to get wasted... cause they're not wasted yet.  So basically, if one person randomly offers you a Smirnof Ice, you have to get on one knee and chug it.  You've been iced.  Now, if you happen to be carrying a Smirnof Ice yourself, you can counter the drink from the other guy and they then have to chug both.  Something like that.  I don't get it cause I'm not drunk or a frat-boy, but I'm sure its funny when it happens.  Anyways, I probably butchered the explanation, but I found a more in depth one for your reading pleasure.

Once you understand it, College Humor's video "Bros Icing Movies" will make more sense.  This wasn't a big job for us.  Just some background replacements, but the video is hilarious.  Silly Morgan Freeman.  He's so gullible.

"Canceled TV Show Love Song" is part of College Humor's "Summer of Music".  They are doing a bunch of original music videos over the summer which should be a lot of fun. 

So, before I go into what we did for the video, I'd just like to mention something that I didn't know until writing this post.  The word "canceled" falls into one of those weird American vs Canadian/British spellings of words.  You know, like "cheque" vs "check, "humour" vs "humor" and "theatre" vs "theater", etc.  Up here in Canuckland, we like to be generous with our L's.  We spell it "cancelled". And why not?  Who doesn't like a little extra L? 

So back to the video... We did 2 FX shots in it.  First, the reference to "Pushing Daisies" where the daisy in the guy's hand morphs from wilted to alive.  That was us.  Then, we did the shot right after where the guy with the daisy looks up in the sky and sees the Serenity (that's the ship from ill fated series "Firefly" - the best sci-fi show ever).  Both shots were composited in After Effects and the Serenity was modeled and animated in Maya.

Enjoy!

"Galactic Empire State of Mind" probably shouldn't warrant a blog post as we did very little in this one, but I thought the video turned out pretty good, and the costumes are great.  Based on "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, this College Humor video was shot in front of a series of giant projectors that displayed the backgrounds.  While it seems that there are some graphics in the begining of the video, that wasn't us unfortunately.  What we created were the 5 seconds of backgrounds that featured (and I hope you know your Star Wars) Hoth (snow fields), Tatooine (desert) and Endor (jungle).  Awesome!  Hurray!

...ok ok, you got me.  The real reason I'm posting this is for the cheap grab at traffic that we can get with meta tags like "Star Wars" and "Jay-Z".  But still watch the video.  We really did do those backgrounds :)

Sobe (you know, the fruit beverage we all love) has recently gone into producing short videos online under the name Sobe Studios.  And you probably already know that because we showcased the Animated Logo and branding we did for Sobe Studios a month or so back.  Well, now there's even more to show off today!

Mr. Vicarious: Street Pranks.  This new vid featuring Nick Kroll and Paul Scheer from, "The League" opens with the logo you've all seen (and hopefully loved), and closes with a brand new rebranding animation we made for the launch of Sobe's new bottle design.

The bottle was completely recreated in Maya by Gloo's Paul Desilva (who made it look like a breeze, mind you).  Don't get me wrong though! A LOT of work went into making this look ABSOLUTELY perfect.  I mean, you think it's easy to make glass 'drop down' like a common pair of pants.  When I asked Desilva how he got it to look just right he said, "I spent tons of time standing in front of the mirror with my pants around my ankles. Finally someone came and pulled them up for me so I could finally leave the bathroom and get to work."