Sundance film festival projections

We were very pleased to make a super-sized projection for the main conference centre at the Sundance Festival in Utah this year. The projection was to mark the launch of the new Sundance archives which is a collaborative venture with the Sundance sponsor HP. The archives contain a huge library of films, photos, scripts and other material collected since the festival's early days in the Eighties.

SquareZero's animators created five animated sequences all several minutes duration along with 5 x 5minute edited sequences of films from the archive. Click here for a preview.

Award Returns

Thanks to the lovely team at the IVCA for kindly replacing our Gold Award (External Interactive Media) which previously was stolen.

We are proud of have it back up in our office. All the team received the Award for the Astra Interactive Trailer made by SquareZero in 2010.

SquareZero are finalists in this years IVCA Livecom awards, taking place next Thursday the 24th of January. We will be entering the Dita Von Teese hologram film which was running at the Design Museum Christian Laboutin exhibition last year.

Will.i.am hologram in Selfridges

SquareZero and Musion, the world leaders in holographic content and projection, began two months of spectacular retail experiences to help mark the global launch of will.i.am's new endeavour, the i.am+ camera range. SquareZero, who are specialists in 3D digital animation, created the content for the i.am+ launch. A Musion EyeCandy™ Lite holographic display was located in a specially designed area of the London department store. Branded to match i.am+’s styling, EyeCandy has been showing holographic i.am+ products beside floating questions directed to shoppers.

The iconic music artist has long been an advocate of hologram technology and in partnership with luxury retailer Selfridges, is using SquareZero's leading holographic content experience to raise the profile and impact of his new camera collection.

Will.i.am's team sent us the endorsement "Well done Ish to you and your team!! The client loved it and it looks stunning in store! Squarezero are making Xmas dreams come true :)"

IVCA Nominations

The IVCA Livecom awards are in January and SquareZero have submitted our Dita von Teese hologram. The projection content was entirely conceived, directed, animated and post-produced in house.

Showgirl Hologram for Christian Louboutin's 20 year retrospective at The Design Museum - by SquareZero for Christian Louboutin.

The two categories we have been nominated for are Cultural and The Arts and Heritage

SquareZero have been lucky to receive four IVCA awards previously:
LIVECOM 2010 Award for Innovation
LIVECOM 2010 Award for International Entertainment
Gold IVCA winners 2010 External Interactive Media
LIVECOM 2007 Award winners for Innovation

Merry Xmas

 Our annual Xmas animation - this year designed and composited by Sarah Klan with 3d animation by Amit Vadher. Enjoy as our front door gets sprayed by the naughty little spray cans.

SquareZero has a new Xmas tree !

We are all very busy working on jobs under NDA so here's a nice picture of Lauren decorating our swish new xmas tree to fill the festive gap.

M+W hologram, behind the scenes.

Another little contribution from our team behind the scenes in the making of the Morecombe and Wise hologram ! Working late on hologram productions can bring out all the dance moves.

Click the pic to watch on YouTube

Eric 'n Ernie dance again

Last Friday Chris Moyles performed with comedy icons Morecambe and Wise at the fund-raising event for Children in Need. The late comedy duo were brought back as HOLOGRAMS to dance to their signature tune Bring Me Sunshine alongside the DJ.

SquareZero were called in by Musion to assist in getting the production of the holograms finished in time for the deadline which was slipping behind schedule. Putting together our expertise in holograms, vfx compositing, extensive resources and skilled team we rescued the project from a sticky predicament - finishing the project just 12 hours before the show.

As a long-standing Musion hologram content partner it was very rewarding to have worked on the visual effects to create this sequence. Our role included delivering and supervising/assisting Holomedia for the BBC on this project.

We are proud of our strategic partnership with Musion. Together we have now successfully delivered well over 50 holographic projects including previously the resurrections of Frank Sinatra and Saatchi's Paul Arden and many more.

Chris said: “When I was a kid Eric and Ernie were gods, so it’s amazing to be able to dance with them for Children in Need. The charity is one that’s always been close to my heart and I jumped at the chance to do something for it.”

click on the picture below to see the show on YouTube:

Here is a basic breakdown of the creative process involved. Original footage is located of Eric and Ernie performing the song. Sometimes this has to come from different archive clips which then need to be assembled into a whole performance and made to match. Then the the heads of our heroes are carefully cut out from the archive footage. 

Then body doubles of Eric and Ernie perform the song in a film shoot with the correct lighting and costume to maximise the hologram's effectiveness. Choreographing head and body is very difficult and at this shoot the actor's chin went over the collar area at the wrong time in many places - this required our team to paint and repair the section wherever the chin overlapped. Painstaking work.

The footage of the body doubles was then taken into After-effects and Nuke where the heads of the doubles were carefully cut out. Then the heads of the real Eric and Ernie were attached the bodies in a complex process involving tracking the parts together and adding missing sections of neck wherever needed.