May 21st, 2009
Forgive us for being a bit slow at posting here for a month or so, to say it’s been a bit busy would be such an understatement we’d expect a good slapping.
We’ve been working with DCH, part of Doner Advertising, for a fair few months now, producing this little chappie (and his puddy tat) in various situations in formats suitable for DCH to use in flash animations. These can be seen on D-Link’s websites throughout Europe and also in various printed ad campaigns. We’re pretty chuffed throughout to have been asked to work on the project, great fun! To see him in action just pop on over to www.dlink.co.uk
Tags: 3d, animation, dlink, flash, spaceman
Posted in 3D Visualisation, Character, General Illustration | Comments Off
March 27th, 2009
Another client but the same group of islands. albino igil were brought in to help finish this project by another company, who supplied us the house models and the island. Our remit was to finish texturing and lighting the project, populate the environment and produce the final animations. We also needed to model the interiors and pop some animations out of those as well. There’s nothing better than staring at sunny pictures all day in the middle of March…
Tags: 3d, 3D Visualisation, animation, apartment, architecture, beach, cape verde, cgi, development, Interior, island, pool, visualisation
Posted in 3D Visualisation, Architecture | Comments Off
March 10th, 2009
Ok - so where’s the goose! A Nottingham-based ad agency asked us to lay a golden egg for them. Our chickens are clever, but not that clever, so the igil hutch inhabitants turned their efforts to squeezing this out in time for the deadline.
Tags: brown, easter, egg, golden, paper, sellotape, tear, wrapped
Posted in 3D Visualisation, General Illustration | Comments Off
March 7th, 2009
Big, bright and beautiful. We could be talking about ourselves, but on this occasion we’re talking about the rather large piece of kit we’ve been swarming over armed with tape measures, sent to us by the Quill International Group based in nearby Melbourne (the wet Derbyshire one, not the dry Australian one who borrowed the name). The Falcon, as it is known, can not fly, but it can blast layers of dirt, grime and old paint from hulls of ships without the use of chemicals - which in our eyes is a very good thing.
They needed it building and an animation lovingy crafted for a rather large boat exhibition in Singapore - these are frames from the animation which will no doubt have bits incorporated into our showreel in the near future 
Tags: 3d, 3D Visualisation, animation, beach, boat, cgi, falcon, hose, quill, sea, ship, tank, tanker
Posted in 3D Visualisation, Product | Comments Off
February 24th, 2009
As I’m sure many of our UK visitors to this page are aware, after this winter’s cold snap, potholes on our roads have become the latest thing to swerve and avoid for fear of losing your car down one. In fact we’re currently writing this from the bottom of one on our lane. Step in Aggregate Industries, who needed an illustration of a UK-shaped pothole to show off their pothole-filling skills (we under-sell them there if we’re brutally honest).
I’m sure, with the millions of potholes around at the moment, that somewhere in the British Isles lies a discernibly UK-shaped pothole just waiting to be photographed, but alas satellite imagery is not quite there yet. The other option was to hire a man with a breaker to ‘make’ a UK-shaped pothole - but that would either involve a very kind private road owner or digging up the public highway, which is frowned upon.
To save the grief, we were hired with our metaphorical breaker (we call it a mouse) and so we donned our safety goggles (we call them specs) and a day later we had this image ready to go into the Times. Can we fix it, yes we can 
Tags: aggregate, asphalt, hole, industries, pothole, road, tarmac, uk, white line
Posted in 3D Visualisation, General Illustration | Comments Off
February 19th, 2009
Having produced an illustration for Abacus Lighting in the past, their ad agency asked us to produce another illustration for a different range of lighting - the big boys (well - it’s actually their middle-sized boys but to us they were big). Some were modelled from scratch, others had CAD data in the form of IGES files so we were able to convert them into a format we can use.
Tags: 3d, 3D Visualisation, cgi, lamps, lights, print, product
Posted in 3D Visualisation, Product, Technical | Comments Off
February 10th, 2009
Ferroli have been rather good to us over the year - here’s another interior shot we’ve produce for them via their advertising and marketing agency. Always fun stuff to work on
Tags: 3d, 3D Visualisation, cgi, ferroli, heating, Interior, product, residential
Posted in 3D Visualisation, Interior, Product | Comments Off
February 3rd, 2009
You may remember we produced some preliminary visuals for the proposed Derby Arm project. With a few hours spare we decided to pull the project from the archives and give it a new lick of paint - the finished piece of animation is in our showreel
Tags: 3d, 3D Visualisation, animation, canal, derby, derbyshire, narrowboat, product
Posted in 3D Visualisation, Product | Comments Off
January 13th, 2009
Once in a while a client asks for something off the wall. As many of our clients know, or should know, we can create accurate physical models produced from our computer-based models. We’ve used rapid prototyping technology before to visualise developments or character designs, but when we were approached by our client to produce a physical 3D model for a prestigious presentation piece we suggested a different technique.
The end client had won an award for the new Milton Keynes Academy, so we modelled a computer version of the building from original plans and used a method of laser etching to produce a miniature of the building in a crystal block - small enough to carry away and large enough to show even the individual upright sun-screen posts, trees and stairways. The finished model was a 9cm cube, weighing in around 3kg including the presentation box. You can get larger but not so luggable versions if wanted, and smaller or many different shapes - what a great project!
Laser-etched crystal cube
Tags: 3d, 3D Visualisation, arch viz, architecture, etching, laser, milton keynes, model, physical
Posted in Physical Model | Comments Off
December 14th, 2008
Sometimes a product is just too large, too heavy, or too large and too heavy to cart it into a photography studio and make it look pretty under the lights. This is where we come in, we’re the designer’s equivalent of the cavalry (we like to think).
Our client, the advertising and marketing agency for Abacus Lighting, needed a front-cover shot for the product range brochure. After deciding on the concept and meetings with the end-client, we went away, set the 3D ovens to full heat, and a few days later this popped out, done to a turn.
Tags: 3d, 3D Visualisation, abacus, cgi, columns, derbyshire, lighting
Posted in 3D Visualisation, Product | Comments Off
