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marc

Apr 06
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Free art director portrait

Free art director portrait

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Free art director portrait, your chance of obtaining a real Marc van Oene

Every once in a while, friends ask me for a personal portrait. So did Soeniel Balak, a very talented art director, whom I worked with for years. We did many award winning projects together. Working for clients such as Burger King and the Dutch royal army for instance and many more have delivered nice advertisments that are still a joy to look at. When he asked me to do a proper portrait for his website and social media profile pictures, I came up with the idea of “moving” portraits with abstract sound.

The result we feel is very interesting and have many options to refine. I figured wouldn’t it be nice to do more of these shots and move on experimenting? It’s not only a great way to meet each other and having coffee, but by doing such a portrait, it’s a nice remembrance of a lovely afternoon reunite and/or meeting new people. As a bonus one can use it for profile pictures too! So if you like this image and you are an art director no matter you know me or not, send me an email. It’s your chance of obtaining a real Marc van Oene. Above all your mother will love it too:)

Jul 01
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Hurley home and away uniform

Hurley home and away uniform

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Hurley home and away uniform

Field hockey is a very fast game that requires great technical and tactical skills to play. In the Netherlands it is very popular and probably played on one of the highest levels of the world. The Dutch “hoofdklasse” is, what the premier league is for football players, considering the amount of foreign players in the Dutch league. Also the Euro hockey league, similar to the champions league in football, has several Dutch contestants every year.  For years, because of my children, I’ve been coach and trainer of Hurley Amsterdam.

As hockey is a relatively “small” sport, lots of help is needed from volunteers to keep the club running. From my background, I work in advertising for many years, I do some communication tasks on behalf of the club. Since there is a new shirt sponsor we had to show the new Hurley home and away uniform. Although summer, the weather Gods weren’t in favour of the shoot. Setting up lights and camera a couple of hours before the talents would arrive delivered the only images without rain.

As it is with deadlines, we had to shoot our first men and women team members in pouring rain, there was no chance of redoing the shot. Luckily we shot the “dry” images before, to be used in retouching as a background. Upfront I visualised a dark sky with the pitch’s new led lights on. While the sky in the image is somewhat greyish, I replaced it with an image of clouds I shot some time ago at the coast of France. The result after a lot of retouching is shown in the animation below.

Apr 15
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Sigma coatings house painter

House painter

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House painter

This is Luigi, a Belgian house painter, posing in front of his work. Although it seems that way. Actually he was posing in a studio close to the city of Mechelen, Belgium. I shot him against a white background and retouched him in the stock images of a modern and a traditional building. In both cases sunlight is created with a rim light in the studio. The stock images had no apparent sun or direct sunlight. This is also added by retouching in such a way that it exactly matches the rim light in the studio setup.  Shots are used for advertisments on behalf of Sigma coatings.

Sigma coatings house painter

Studio shot of Luigi a Belgian house painter. Composite with background images from gettyimages.com

Feb 22
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Coolbest premium orange

Coolbest premium Orange 2

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Coolbest premium Orange, 3D modelling and photography

Quite often I’ve done these type of shots for a variety of products. In this case the ad agency asked me to do a shot for Coolbest premium orange, fruit and packaging in a kitchen setting on a wooden table with a window in the background. Obviously kitchens are build for cooking and to do this shot you’ll need quite some distance to setup camera and lights. The challenge is to find a large enough kitchen with a stainless steel worktop, a wooden table and a window with enough space to do the shot.

3D (CGI) of a kitchen made for a commercial on behalf of Coolbest orange

Studio shot of packaging


Coolbest premium orange

3D kitchen mesh

That’s a needle in a haystack. Even with the help of location scouts and agencies you’ll have to do a lot of retouching to create the image that is asked for. My proposal to do this was to build the set in CGI where the art director had the possibility to pin point precise the wanted wood, worktop, size and position of window etcetera. The packaging, oranges and juice is a photograph and mapped into the 3D model. Because the usage is a commercial there was a same shot needed of the packaging in an ice field where both images can be animated.

 

3D (CGI) of a kitchen made for a commercial on behalf of Coolbest orange

Exact same shot with an ice field background


Commercial of the apple version

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 11
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Biodermal, Hydraxol and PCLE commercials

Biodermal, Hydraxol and PCLE commercials

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Biodermal, Hydraxol and PCLE commercials

Some ten years ago, who could imagine that it would possible to shoot products that physically don’t exist? Due to deadlines Biodermal wanted to have both commercials for Hydraxol and PCLE ready before the actual product was available for a shoot. Luckily technology has evolved so rapidly that nowadays it is possible to create nearly everything in CGI with great realism. A new feature that comes with the virtual creation of products is the opportunity to do an animation something that wasn’t possible with regular photography. As a result we could create a commercial very similar in terms of colour grading and texture to previously shot conventional films.

 

Biodermal, Hydraxol and PCLE commercials

Apr 10
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The Cow ring, 3D print

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The Cow ring, 3D print.

These are exciting times. I never thought my line of work would widen itself so rapidly. From just plain photography to a combination of imagery and cgi or a creation entirey done in 3D, as the above image of the cow ring, 3D print in polished silver, is done. Even the cow skin and hairs are modelled. Through rapid technological development several professions merge into a profession no one invented a name for yet, or if you do know, send me an email;-)

This image shows a 3d model of a ring which is printed in Sterling silver and afterwards polished.

Frysians grazing in Holland

In this case I needed a birthday gift for my wife. Since she is raised in a family of farmers she still shows some weakness for cows. I figured, wouldn’t it be awesome to create something especially for her, a one of a kind piece. Because of her love for cows I took the skin pattern of a Frysian cow and created a flat 3D model which I wrapped around a virtual cylinder representing the size of her finger. The cow ring is printed in polished Sterling silver with the help of our Shapeways partner. Because of the irregular shape, the ring can have a different look by turning it around your finger. Scroll down for a video of the changing shape.

This image shows a 3d model of a ring which is printed in Sterling silver and afterwards polished.

The flat 3D pattern wrapped around a cylinder

 

Flat polygon model of the cow pattern

Flat polygon model of the cow pattern

Currently the ring is available in three sizes through our Shapeways shop. Here’s a chart that comes in handy to determine what size you’ll need, because of the non connecting shape, the ring is slightly adjustable.

 

 

Mar 27
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Every single inch planned landscape at the Dutch shore, close to the city of Schoorl

Every single inch

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Every single inch

These images are shot at the Dutch shore close to the city of Schoorl in the north-west of The Netherlands. Every single inch of the landscape is entirely engineered on top of the “Hondsbossche zeewering” a stone coastal defense work from around 1880. Already since the middle ages this was a vulnerable strip of land, attacked many times by the sea. Since 2015 the defense work is covered with tons of North sea sand to stand against coming floods. Like in many parts of Holland every single inch is planned, thought about and given permissions to, of what one may do, or more important what is not to be done on a certain spot. Here the created dunes are cut by small walks and even a parking lot is designed. Signs tell you that you are not allowed to leave the trail. Even the beach itself has directions on where to walk or not to. Plants are also given thought, not only which species but also how much space there must be between them for optimal protection of the dunes. A certain pattern shows in the way of planting. The nature is engineered, which is a contradiction, but quite useful in this case for protection. Not only nature has been thought about but also many strong labor laws are present. Like legislation for the safety of workers. A detail of such laws shows the worker wearing a helmet, an obligation. In this case it comes in handy for crashing seagulls.

Mar 23
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Sigma packaging of paint cans

Sigma packaging of paint cans

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Sigma paint packaging

As many company’s do, Sigma tend to change their packaging design regularly. Sometimes it is just a new logo design that has to be incorporated but often there is a wish for a complete new design for just a single can or the entire range of products. Sigma is part of PPG, a large manufacturer of paint products for both domestic and professional usage. Their product line is very wide, because of this I advised the client to create a 3D format in which every single new product design can be changed and fit seamless into the existing range of products. That is something that cannot be reached with photography. You never have 100% same lighting or camera point of view over a longer period. In 3D or CGI as it is called, it is a guarantee for constancy even over years. The handling is made very easy too. Where you had to ship items to photographers to shoot, the client just sent a flat illustrator design by mail and receives a rendered image of the desired packaging with incredible realism, within a day.

Dec 08
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Pro gold painter church abseiling morning light sun painting

Painter

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Painter for Pro Gold painting materials

Pro gold is a company that manufactures everything a professional painter needs: brushes, sand paper, gloves … everything. You get the idea. For this advertisement, we wanted to express pushing oneself beyond ordinary limits to get the best results possible.

The concept: a man abseiled, hanging from a building tower, painting the wooden exterior moldings of a church.

We had very specific requirements for the shoot. The building, for instance, had to have wood somewhere on the tower that needed to be painted, and we also needed a balcony on the building to set up the necessary equipment for the shoot. After a thorough search we found a church on the Dutch island of Texel, a perfect building set in a fantastic location–all without distractions cluttering the background.

We planned the shoot on a beautiful day in September. We envisioned an image of the hanging painter backlit by the morning sun. We wanted to capture this idea without the help of computer trickery. There was only a short period we had in which to take the shot, somewhere between five to fifteen minutes, where the contrast wasn’t too high to avoided white clipping and underexposed blacks.

We set up our gear the day before, including the ropes, the camera, and the remote controls and did some testing. That way we knew exactly what to do the next morning. On the day of the shoot there was an extremely dense fog. We went up the tower around 5:30 but the sun was not powerful enough to burn away the heavy mist. Luckily, we were able to do several shots of the upcoming sun as well as the painter, using different exposure values. That way, we were able to composite the shot in the computer. Not ideal, but the result was perfect.

 

 

Dec 08
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Statue of liberty

By Blog posts, CGI, Commissioned No Comments

Statue of Liberty animation for the Dutch lottery  “Miljoenenjacht”

This commercial is completely rendered in 3D, CGI animation. The commercial, for those who don’t understand Dutch, is about winning a trip to New York.

The concept was to create a smiling Statue of Liberty that would appeal to the audience’s imagination. For the background I used a HDRI image of a sky. A flat sky image wouldn’t work–the sky had to move along with the camera as it panned around the statue. Using IBL (image based lighting), the statue reflects the light from the HDRI image, making the two fits seamlessly together.  The trickiest part was to create a believable smile–I mean, it isn’t every day you see a statue crack a grin.

The result speaks for itself.

Statue of liberty polygons 3d cgi animation hdri ibl smiling

 

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