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SOL DESIGN FX JACKS UP SPOTS WITH GENARTS SAPPHIRE PLUG-INS
Sol Design FX is a leading design, effects and finishing boutique with offices in Venice Beach and Chicago. Specializing in commercials for national TV, the Sol Design FX team recently completed a number of high-profile spots such as the Kellogg's Apple Jacks Investigative Squad series, Applebee's/Weight Watchers special and the Budweiser "bottle caps" ad. In each of these projects Sapphire Plug-ins from GenArts played a key role in achieving a unique look and feel that made the ads a success.Sol Design FX had been using Sapphire Plug-ins on its infernos, flames and smokes for several years. When the After Effects version was released early this year, the Sol team quickly started using the plug-ins even more frequently - integrating them into almost every new project.
Sol Design FX Designer Matthew Crnich explains: "As soon as we found out that GenArts was coming out with an After Effects version of Sapphire, we grabbed the demo version off the website and immediately started using it in production. The results were so impressive that soon after that we bought the full version for every single one of our systems. The availability of Sapphire for the After Effects system means that we can all use it a lot more often and on many more projects."
One of the biggest projects Sol Design FX has been involved with recently was the Kellogg's Apple Jacks TV commercials. For this campaign, which spanned an eight month period, kids across America were invited to help the Apple Jacks Investigative Squad (A.J.I.S.) figure out who put actual jack shapes in Apple Jacks cereals. Sol Design FX worked on all of the 20 spots developed for this campaign and every single one of them featured either some top layer effects work or title design which made extensive use of Sapphire Plug-ins.
"We'd been tasked with creating a CSI kind of look for the high-tech whodunit series with scenes featuring characters looking through microscopes or scanning information shown on large computerized glass wall displays. For this we made extensive use of the RackDefocus effect as well as Glows for many of the title effects," explains Brian Higgins, also a Designer at Sol Design FX.
Another recent project where Sapphire Plug-ins for After Effects proved particularly useful was for an Applebee's commercial. To announce that the chain of family restaurants was bringing out a healthy menu featuring the Weight Watchers point system, Applebee's decided that they needed a lighter, softer version of their standard logo, which traditionally features bold greens and saturated reds. Using GenArts' Sapphire Plug-ins, Sol Design FX created a new version of the logo which had an edged glass texture and feel to it.
"Without Sapphire Plug-ins we would not have been able to create this very specific look that the client was looking for. We used the Glow effect as well as RackDefocus, BlurMotion, & RadialGradient to create a feeling of transparency and light. Everyone just loved the end result," comment Crnich.
"There are so many plug-ins out there that have a look that you can instantly see and recognize, whereas Sapphire has so many different options and parameters that each look you create has a sense of being totally unique. We love that about them," he adds.
Sol Design FX also recently completed a 3D-heavy spot for Budweiser. For this particular ad, they created dozens of 3D bottle caps in Maya and mental ray and also handled all the title design treatment. The Sapphire Glow effect was applied along with some custom matting to create the final look they were striving for.
"I love the fact that we were able to take a really cool piece of animation with the bottle caps and push it even farther with Sapphire Glows and Glints. It's the best set of plug-ins for After Effects I know. I probably use the Gradient effect on just about every thing I do, and I like to joke that I'm going to build my career on the Sapphire Glow. It's such a cool effect!" concludes Higgins.
About GenArts' Sapphire Plug-ins
Sapphire Plug-ins fully and seamlessly integrate into a number of editing and compositing systems including: Adobe After Effects and Premiere; Apple Final Cut Pro, Shake and Motion; Avid Media Composer Adrenaline, Media Composer, Xpress Pro, Xpress, Xpress DV, Symphony, DS, Nitris and Newscutter; Discreet combustion, flint, flame, inferno, fire, smoke and burn; eyeon Software Digital Fusion; Quantel generationQ; and Media 100 844/X. Sapphire Plug-ins offer a comprehensive suite of tools and effects that can transform any film or video clip. They are resolution-independent, include multi-processor support for faster rendering, and run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Irix.About GenArts, Inc.
Based in Cambridge, Mass., GenArts, Inc. is a premier provider of digital visual effects plug-ins for the film, broadcast and video industry. Introduced in 1996, Sapphire Plug-ins have become an industry standard for high-end visual effects creation at leading studios, broadcast and post production facilities around the world. They are widely recognized for their unrivaled quality and ease-of-use, and have been used extensively to create an array of feature films such as Spider-Man I and II, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix trilogy, Terminator 3, X-Men II, Daredevil, Star Wars-Episode I and II, Ice Age, Pearl Harbor, Final Fantasy, Titanic, and Armageddon. Additional GenArts product information can be found at http://www.genarts.com.
Contact:
Nicole Panas
GenArts, Inc.
1-617-492-2888
info@
Text ©2004 GenArts, Inc. All rights reserved. Images courtesy of Sol Design FX.
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