If you've stepped into a Target or Best Buy recently, chances are you've seen motion504's work. The Minneapolis-based company has created a number of animated campaigns for the two major retailers, currently running in stores nationwide.

motion504 provides motion design, animation and effects for commercials, promos, TV shows, films and related projects. Founder Andy Reynolds said the in-store spots for Best Buy and Target were created across multiple platforms, with CINEMA 4D as the major software tool.

A still from motion504's in-store wireless telephone promotion for Target.

The nine-spot package for Target features activities that can be done using Target's Photo Lab. "We did character animation where gift cards come to life," he said. "There's heavy use of camera motion and interesting light. The photos were the star in most of the spots so we had to inject personality into them through their movements." This Target project marked the first time that motion504's designers used CINEMA 4D's MoGraph module.

Another Target project that relied heavily on CINEMA 4D was a 30-second wireless phone spot. The promo included 3D animation with photo-realistic phones in a huge glossy environment that included weather, sky and cloud elements.

This CINEMA 4D screenshot shows the elements motion504 used to create the Target wireless promotional spot.

The company also created a series of three HD, in-store holiday spots for Best Buy, which is driven by seamless 3D moves through multiple layers of a gift. The stylized and glossy CG spots incorporate the retailer's signature blue and yellow motif as white silhouettes of people are captured in the act of giving.

The "people" were created through manual animation in Poser. Reynolds and his team also did motion capture to gather data to use with the characters in CINEMA 4D. "We used the Poser Pro plug-in to work back and forth between CINEMA 4D and Poser to give some of these people life," Reynolds explained. "They are silhouettes, but they have volume and the camera moves around them. With no faces, all of their reactions had to be expressed through physical movements and pacing."

Another feature of the Best Buy spots is that all the packages are initially wrapped in ribbons, and then unwrapped as the spot progresses. motion504 used the Clothilde feature in CINEMA 4D's MOCCA module to animate the ribbons, he said.

This Best Buy holiday promotion shows a couple unwrapping their gift box.

"I only switched to CINEMA 4D in the past year," Reynolds said. "The other three creative director/designers had been using CINEMA 4D for years, and I had been using LightWave forever. I didn't want to switch to another package and have to relearn it. But after two or three weeks of using CINEMA 4D on our first project, I was hooked. The transition and the learning curve have been so easy."

Reynolds said that Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects, and MAXON's CINEMA 4D are all considered design tools. Projects can originate from scratch in any of them. CINEMA 4D has a number of features that make his company's workflow a lot easier to handle, and is a great tool for interfacing with their other tools, including After Effects, Vue and Poser, he continued. It can also load LightWave models and animation projects. "Photoshop and Illustrator are the design tools we use on a regular basis and CINEMA 4D seems to work pretty flawlessly with them. That's why I say CINEMA 4D has become more of the center of our design package, rather than one of the spokes."

The couple in the Best Buy promotional spot uses a remote to turn on their new home theater.

He pointed to one project that involved a considerable interface effort. motion504 created a package of promotional pieces for a show on The Discovery Channel called "Expedition: Borneo." The promos were executed using a combination of After Effects, CINEMA 4D and Vue. "The clouds, the island environment - trees and so forth -- were all done in Vue," he said. "With CINEMA 4D, we added the camera, lighting, type, some sub-lighting of clouds, and such elements as water enhancement and birds. The final color correction and composite were in After Effects. But throughout the project, we used the CINEMA 4D camera as the master camera for all three programs."

The title sequence for "Expedition: Borneo" included elements created in CINEMA 4D, Vue and After Effects.

Another project for The Discovery Channel was for the show "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen." The CINEMA 4D-created spot included a title sequence with 3D animations that included diving from hieroglyphics carved in stone into a biological world of chromosomes.

A general promotion for the Science Channel called "Space Week" was also done in CINEMA 4D. Reynolds said the entire package was "an homage to the memorable retro graphics of arcade video games including bright oranges and blues, as well as 3D extruded block type." With its cool and synthetic feel, "Space Week" was a departure from the organic and natural work motion504 often creates for clients.

The orthographic camera feature in CINEMA 4D was particularly helpful on this project, he said. "We wanted an interesting way to present these titles. We were looking for a specific look, a very false and unrealistic view you can only do on a computer, or that someone might sketch in product design. We thought we were going to have to fake the camera to get that effect, but that just happened to be one of the choices in CINEMA 4D."

motion504 created a retro 80s video game effect in this spot for the Science Channel's "Space Week" event.

motion504 uses the most current Release 10 version of CINEMA 4D, and frequently uses the MoGraph, MOCCA and Advanced Renderer modules. The company's render farm consists of a cadre of 30-plus Macs and PCs with five terabytes of storage.

"We have multiple designers who all are working on projects simultaneously," Reynolds concluded. "Previously, we felt like After Effects was our most central tool. But over the last nine months, we are more often using CINEMA 4D as a main tool. Sharing projects across multiple people simultaneously is so much easier with CINEMA 4D than with other options."

http://www.motion504.com/

http://www.maxon.net/

Bobby L. Hickman is an Atlanta-based freelancer who writes on a variety of business, travel and leisure topics. To learn more about his work, visit www.blhickmaninc.com.