Pixel Farm

This month marks Design Director Tom Jacobsen’s twelfth year with Pixel Farm. To celebrate the occasion, we sat down with Tom to ask how he came to the Farm and what keeps his creativity fresh:

Tell us about your background.
I started working at Stiefel & Co on the production side in Hollywood to pay for grad school at UCLA. One of my first jobs out the gate was an Outback Steakhouse spot with Rachel Hunter. What was even better was Madonna and Harvey Keitel were shooting Dangerous Game in the soundstage next to our offices. After putting my time in as a PA, I shifted gears and started animating and designing for video games. After two titles under my belt, I moved into visual effects for movies. Digiscope had offices in the old Howard Hughes airport in Marina Del Rey, CA. The offices overlooked the sound stage that housed the model department for Independence Day. Having the opportunity to work on the film as well, I spent my rendering lunches watching them blow up 3 different sizes of the White House.

Eventually I landed in Minneapolis where I have spent the last 16 years creating visual effects and animation for many different projects. Some of the highlights while at Pixel Farm have been music videos for Incubus, Foo Fighters and Barenaked Ladies. Finishing hundreds of commercials for great clients like Target, Best Buy, Fallon, Carmichael Lynch, and PMH (to name a few.) Working on experimental projects that displayed animations on skyscrapers in Singapore, video boards in Times Square, stage screens at the Stevie Nicks concert and every game at the new Twins stadium. I keep asking myself, what’s not to like about this business?

What got you into this industry?
The realization that people actually were paid to make Saturday morning cartoons. Also, every animator I know has lived at least into their 90′s.

How do you stay inspired?
Enjoying the outdoors. Sailing, biking, and photography to name a few.

What brands have you worked on throughout the years?
Target, JCP, Best Buy, Volvo, Purina, Miller, Coke, Smirnoff, Gerber, Rapala, Chrysler, BMW, Travelers, Delta

What is one thing that would surprise people about you?
That I was the escort for Ms. Burger King in Hawaii. I think her line was “Get your choppers on a whopper”.

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Pixel Farm recently had the pleasure of collaborating with the creative folks over at Little & Company to create their “Little Love Songs” project.

Our audio team composed 4 distinct pieces of music as the base of the little love songs project. They then recorded over 500 combinations of lyric content under 4 categories giving the web user a personal and unique way of creating their own love song.

In order to give users an easy way to personalize their love song, Pixel Farm Digital worked in collaboration with Little and Company to develop an HTML5/Javascript-driven microsite which is both desktop- and iOS-compatible.
The end result is a user-friendly interactive web experience with a uniquely personal song that can be sent to a loved one via email or shared via social media.

Take a minute and send a Little Love Song to your loved one!

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Without a doubt, Mattel’s Barbie is one of the most iconic brands in history. To dive, fly, and swim into the heart of the Barbie experience, we teamed up with PMH to produce a television spot that fully captures her spirit. By showing how our favorite fashionista sparks creativity and spirit, the result is a fun and vibrant visualization of what Barbie means to girls everywhere.

“For generations, Barbie has been an icon to girls across the globe,” explains Floria Sigismondi, director of the new commercial that aired in late January. “. . . she’s beautiful, glamorous and fun, but more importantly, she allows girls to really unlock their imaginations.” In the spot, a girl’s bedroom closet is transformed into a magic gateway that takes her and her friends to a bright, colorful world. By land, sea, and air, they discover a deep and fantastic universe, all united through imagination. Not only is the classic doll shown in the spot, but numerous accessories and a newly revamped girls clothing line are featured as well. Floria and Believe Media shot the commercial at Red Studios in Hollywood, while Minneapolis studio Channel Z edited the spot, with Hest & Kramer adding original music and Egg contributing sound mixing and design. However, when it came to giving the new ad the right amount of visual magic, PMH turned to Pixel Farm. Watch the finished spot below!

Pixel Farm’s talented artists worked intensely on the spot’s visual effects – including color correction, animation, and digital composition. “We have a long history of working with PMH on their fantastic & iconic projects. I’d like to think we share a shorthand language together, that allows us to get to the point graphically and aesthetically as directly as possible.” says Visual Effects Supervisor Tony Mills. “PMH brings the magic to everything they touch. Their work leaves you with an lasting impression of their client’s brands in a way that few agencies can match.”

PMH’s team created massive, lush, and colorful set pieces for use in the commercial. Pixel Farm was able to take these large, oversized props (like floating clouds made of dozens of pounds of spun fiber, flowers, trees, and fish), and used their wizardry to make them even more real and dreamlike. Using bluescreen and digital compositing, they were also able to make the young girls in the commercial fly and swim through these worlds with ease. Click to below to watch behind-the-scenes.

“PMH consistently delivers unique and original creative,” says Pixel Farm Co-Founder Kurt Angell. “Their vision is always an inspiration to our artists. We are endlessly proud to be a part of their creative team.”

As the spot premiers nationally, it’s hard not to feel some Twin Cities pride knowing that these fantastic and colorful worlds were created by PMH and enhanced visually by Pixel Farm.

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Pixel Farm is thrilled to have recently collaborated with our friends at production house PPS & ad agency Northlich to produce Ohio Lottery’s 2012 integrated campaign. Together, we helped bring “O-Bot” to life – a friendly little guy that finds his “Pick 3″ and “Pick 4″ numbers in the most unusual of places.

Working with agencies and companies, we pride ourselves in being able to get a clear understanding of our clients visions and being able to bring them to life. Oh, and have a little fun along the way. We really can all do the robot dance.

Pixel Farm worked intensely with PPS & Northlich to develop O-Bot. Our talented 3D animation department joyfully dove in to developing the character, exploring the possibilities of how he would look with different colors and shapes during the initial stages of the project. The team presented several options for Northlich, each with different appearances and personalities. This allowed Northlich to shape their creative ideas and to help spark their imaginations as to how O-Bot would appear. As you can see from the concepts below, O-Bot took several different forms before he became what he is today. (Click on the images to get a larger view!)

In addition to nailing down the design for O-Bot, the team also dug into how his world would appear. Animator Joe Russo spoke more about the exploration of different backgrounds and props for the campaign. “We had so much fun working on this project because all of the elements that we could play with in each scene. Often the elements in the background don’t get a lot of attention, but play an important role in the overall design.” For each scene, designs were also presented for the go-ahead from Northlich. Our team was able create designs that added personality and depth to O-Bot’s mini-adventures. (Again, click to see more.)

With O-Bot and the set designs explored on paper, the team moved to create storyboards to block out how each of the individual scenes would progress. With these storyboards, the team developed the spots using 3D software to create the finished animations. (Click. Bigger. View.)

O-Bot out.

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S’up! Matt Pekarek here. New Assistant Social Media and Marketing guy. Still very new and still trying not to forget names within 3 seconds of meeting people.

One of the nice parts of the job here is pouring through all of the archived work that’s been produced within these walls. Great names and great companies. It isn’t hard to talk about what we’ve got when there’s such a solid pedigree of past (and present and future) work. However, a couple days ago, I received an e-mail from our resident fashion maven and professional social butterfly Sarah Edwards.

The subject was “Family Feud”.

I was intrigued.

It turns out that our own Tom Jacobsen, Design Director and all-around really nice guy, was in a couple of episodes of Family Feud in 1992. Somehow, these episodes got uploaded to our internal server and have made the rounds. Apparently, there is growing consensus that all of the great early 90’s hair and smack talk from Ray Combs is deserving of a larger audience. So, we’re going to try something over the next few weeks.

Every day, we’re going tweet out a question from those two episodes. Tweet back with the special hastag, and if you get the top answer, you’ll win that day (and, hey, if you’ve seen it already, no fair cheat tweeting – or “Cheeting”). The person who wins the most days gets a special prize with no monetary value whatsoever. It’ll be good, but wholly worthless.

To top it all off, after the contest we’ll upload the edited episodes to our Vimeo channel. We’ll also be super nice and include some INCREDIBLE vintage commercials. The early 90s was the age of Nirvana and Alice in Chains, but it was also the age of teased perms, shoulder pads, and pastel colors. Consider yourself warned.

So, the contest begins Monday, January 23. If you haven’t already, start following @pixelfarm.

See you on the twitterversethingy.

Matt

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Pixel Farm’s collaboration with Motionpoems, since it’s inception in 2008, continues to advance the Motionpoems mission to broaden the audience of poetry

Pixel Farm creatives Deb Kirkeeide and Tom Jacobsen were among 12 talented artists that took part in collaborating with poets featured in the Best American Poetry 2011.

Jacobsen was paired with poet L.S. Klatt whose poem was based on Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth was a realist painter and his favorite subject matter was often the land and people around him. On a 9-day Dakota road trip with his son, Jacobsen snapped photos of the Midwest landscape that were inspired by the painter and then incorporated into the finished piece.

 

 
Deb Kirkeeide has an extensive background in painting and a continually expressed love for the arts. She worked with poet James Longenbach to bring his poem entitled “Snow” to life. While sometimes it is challenging to try and interpret what the poet wants to express visually, Longenbach’s response to Deb’s piece was, “I think it is gorgeous, I love the watercolor tones , I love especially the way in which it feels as if it were one long tracking shot, the mind moving effortlessly through it’s accumulations. The snow globe at the end is a brilliant touch, an image of the containment, the space of the mind, that is everywhere implicit.” It is always interesting to see how the artist interprets the poem and how the poet might learn something new about their work. To view more of Kirkeeide’s artwork, click here. Click below to see the finished piece.

 

Music is another way we make sense of our lives, a way in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds. Utilizing the talents of Pixel Farm’s audio team, the poems come to life to tell a story both visually and emotionally.

Pixel Farm audio designer Jesse Marks said, “Poetry is so subjective and I get so excited to be a part of Motionpoems because it creates an open canvas with lots of passionate collaborators.”

Thank you to Motionpoems for including us in such a unique project!

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Partnering with Hopkins High School’s ProPEL program, Pixel Farm was delighted to mentor two stellar students in all things VFX and post-production. Under the mild-mannered tutelage of Executive Producer Billy “The Kruser” Kruse, Jack and Dani were able to shadow digital artists, animators, sound designers and composers to get a better idea of what we do at Pixel Farm. Eighteen weeks later, these smart, passionate whippersnappers created this content piece to describe their experience. Pixel Farm is proud to present to you Jack and Dani…Filmmakers of the Future!!!

Pixel Farm Mentorship from Jack Anderson on Vimeo.

No Comments | In: Etc., News, People | tags: Bill Kruse, Executive Producer, Hopkins High School, Mentorship, ProPEL. | +

To set the stage for Target’s Americana brand, Pixel Farm and PMH joined forces with prominent director Peggy Sirota to give the brand a stylish, nostalgic look. A significant amount of pre-visualization and design was done by Pixel Farm and PMH to ensure all of the visual effects would come together in one cohesive trendy commercial. Tom Jacobsen, VFX Artist at Pixel Farm and lead artist on project comments “The opportunity to supervise on set as well as the ability to shoot stills to incorporate into the spot, proved invaluable in making the VFX work and the spot gel.” Adding to the strong visual approach of the commercial is a re-mix of Shirley Temple singing “Early Bird.”

Below is the finished spot as well as some behind-the scenes footage that will give you some toe tapping insight to the things we do at Pixel Farm.

Behind-the-scenes footage shot by Pixel Farm Editor Doug Griess.

No Comments | In: Animation, Etc., Fashion, People, Spots, Target | tags: Alicia Reece, Deb Kirkeeide, Joe Russo, Rich Haesemeyer, Tom Jacobsen, Tony Mills. | +

For five years, Target’s GO International Designer Collective has collaborated with both high-end and emerging designers to create fly-off-the-shelf fashion for women at an affordable price. From the beloved Alexander McQueen to the imaginative Jean Paul Gaultier, Target’s Go collections are a dream come true for thrifty fashionistas. To celebrate the 5th anniversary of the brand, Target has re-released 34 of their “greatest hits” from 17 world-renowned designers.

To launch the campaign, Pixel Farm worked in tandem with our friends at PMH to produce a surreal world of fashion that was full of color, imagination and possibilities. Inspired by the trompe l’oeil (literally meaning “deceive the eye”) artistic method, Animation Lead Tom Doeden, Colorist Oscar Oboza and Artists Tony Mills and Jay Holgate employed a mixture of digital painting, sky replacement, set extension and a ton of bold colors to push the spot into stark hyper reality. Nicely done, guys!

Check out the finished spot below. And get over to Target pronto as these pieces are only available for a limited time!

No Comments | In: Celebrity, Etc., Fashion, Spots, Target | tags: color correction, Jay Holgate, Mike Kolloen, Oscar Oboza, PMH, Tony Mills, VFX. | +

Pixel Farm recently collaborated with The PPS Group & Bandy Carroll Hellige to create two spots for the Kentucky Lottery. Animation rockstars Rich Haesemeyer, Joe Russo, and Alicia Reece flew down to Kentucky to direct, VFX supervise, and puppeteer the action.

A mixture of live-action puppeteering and CG animation were used to maintain the photo-realism and achieve an authentic, organic movement. After production, the animation team removed the puppet rigs, comped in CG elements, corrected color, and brought these Washingtons to life.

No Comments | In: Animation, News, People, Spots, Uncategorized | | +