5 Hour Energy “Power Up Your Summer”

We pride ourselves on prioritizing innovative VFX thinking. We honor the process of creating and purposely challenge ourselves. We appreciate “outside of the box” solutions for tricky problems. We admit this ingenuity sparks an eagerness inside of us. Our ambition is fueled and ready to go; It makes the vision seem easily attainable. In this particular spot, we experienced that, and this effect became one of the more complex challenges we’ve encountered in quite some time. 

Once the nitty-gritty started, and our fixation was set on this “cutout” effect, we quickly realized it was not going to be as straight forward to execute as initially thought. We considered various creative solutions, both 2D and 3D. Time and time again we hit a wall. The goal was to consistently have our cutout effect perfectly outline our character through the full range of motion. On top of this, we had to maintain proportionate distribution around the entire contour. We needed seamless integration. Nothing less. 

Ultimately, we created a custom toolset using Blink/Python in Nuke. With this toolkit in conjunction with 3D point based tracking data, there it was. An accurate and automatically generated cutout for any character input we desired. The fruits of our labor were finally there. Well, in this case, not there––and that’s exactly what we wanted. 

Our solution provided us with a brand new toolset, which gave us full control over scale, distribution and spacing at any point within the workflow. When it gets tough, we put our minds together and get creative.