Bomper joined forces with AKQA to bring Volvo’s new vision ‘Safety in Mind’ to life. Our team created 119 assets for this huge project ranging from deep dives into the vision, website assets and advanced murmurations; our biggest project yet! The vision is inspired by Volvo’s EX90 vehicle, which features LIDAR technology, a key sensing technology that sees beyond the human range!
We were approached by the design and innovation advertising company AKQA after they completed the look development test with the CGI studio Brickland. AKQA worked with Volvo to create the creative strategy behind the ‘Safety in Mind’ vision then brought us onboard to further develop the final look and to execute their vision.
The films consist of artful murmurations representing LiDAR's point cloud technology, and use abstract motion design and visual symbolism to demonstrate how the new applications of technology will drive Volvo into the future.
A calming and considered colour palette was also used to reflect Volvo’s reassuring mission to eradicate fatal injuries in their vehicles and reframe what feeling safe indicates to the whole automotive industry.
The final campaign resulted in X number of assets, including website assets, social media content, still imagery and screen content for a series of online keynotes, filmed at the state-of-the-art LED ARRI volume stage, which delve further into the new fully electric flagship SUV, the Volvo EX90.
Development
Creating the murmuration effect for this project was a big technical challenge for the team as there were many different factors to take into consideration.
Firstly, they had to try and accurately create the general motion of the murmuration, which they did in Houdini using a combination of various particle forces and custom velocity fields to help guide and art-direct the motion. In terms of the look of the murmuration, it was important for the Bomper team to find a balance of capturing the realistic look of the murmuration which generally comes from the scale and density of the particles, as well also having the spheres large enough to add depth and look appealing when rendered.
Additional challenges were turning the murmuration into a seamless loop, which the team achieved by using time shifting and linear interpolation inside of Houdini in order to blend between the in and out points of the simulation, and the final challenge was having the murmuration transition into various objects such as a face and the Volvo car, which involved a number of intricate technical steps.
First scattering points on the objects and matching the point count with the simulation, and then using custom falloffs and linear interpolation in order to blend between the two and help art direct the transitions and give us finer control over the timing of the transitions.
Credits
Client: Volvo
Agency: AKQA
Production: Bomper Studio
Creative Director: Emlyn Davies
Technical Director: Colin Wood
Producer: Robyn Viney
Production Coordination: Molly Stracy
3D Artists: Colin Wood, Rhodri Teifi, Zach F Evans, Mark Procter, Allie Holmes, Scott Marlow
FX Artist: Colin Wood
Lead 3D Animator: Bianca Iancu
Compositing: Zach F Evans
Editing: Zach F Evans, Owain Hopkins
Studio Manager: Ceri Davies
CG Look Development: Brickland
Unreal/ Keynote Production: Dandelion & Burdock
ARRI Production: Locate Productions
Software
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects
Cinema 4D
Houdini
Redshift
Ftrack
