BBC creative reached out to Twenty Third C asking us to collaborate on BBC Two’s first rebrand in 20 years. We were tasked with creating the ‘Pleasurable Absorbing’ ident, a mood that was inspired by the work of Holton Rower. We took a deep look into his process and set about researching ‘how’, this led us on an explorational journey in the world of practical paint pouring techniques. We brought on Davy Evans to conduct and lengthy RnD process whilst we dove deeper into how we could mix paint and 3D geometry. From the offset we decided to mix the real with the digital in order to create something unique. Once we’d found the right combination of acrylic and paint medium, we 3D printed the 2 form and began pouring paint against it and shot the results in 4k. It took around 45 minutes of paint pouring to create the wipe in,which we later compressed in to about 15 frames. The whole process was a perfect example of what Twenty Third C is all about, Blending and mixing the digital with the physical realm.
Credits
Client
BBC Creative
Director
Twenty Third C
Artists
Nik Hill, Stylow
Paint Jedi
Davy Evans
Special thanks
Laurence Honderick and Will Jarvis
The first in a new series of videos for Illenium’s forthcoming show, Take You Down, explores a narrative where our ambiguous character is falling through a multidimensional, architectural world, symbolic of her/his journey to find source of their pain.
When MJ Cole reached out looking for a music video for his new track, I naturally jumped at the chance! Having been a fan of MJ Cole’s music for years it was an amazing opportunity to pour a lot of passion in to a project. Having heard the track, it was clear to me that the piece had to be fun, vibrant and a bit surreal. I wanted to stay true to MJ Cole’s roots but align the visual style to work for todays market.
The inspiration for the video stemmed from the music itself. Sometimes a piece of music makes you see a certain thing, or a collection of things. When listening to Pictures in my Head it instantly triggered images of a colourful world made up of random visual metaphors. The more I dissected the lyrics of the track it felt like it was all about the idea of love and the emotional experiences that go with it.
In the video we venture in to the mind of the female vocalist, exploring visually what the lyrics may represent. The overall vibe is random and dream like. There are sexual undertones in the lyrics (or at least that's what I got from it) so I tried to capture some of this naughtiness and portray it in a way that wasn't crude but still fun and visually appealing. 'Where the magic happens' and 'Breakfast in bed' were just a couple of ideas behind some of the visuals in the chorus.
Once I knew MJCole was on board with the idea I set about building a team to help execute the vision. In this instance I had the help from 3 wonderful female 3D artists each from different corners of the globe. Mexico, Canada and London via France. Electra, Lauren and Grace all brought another layer of unique interpretation to the project. This collaborative effort helped enrich the overall visual and take it up a notch. Once we had all the scenes built I set about animating, texturing and rendering in C4D and Octane.
Credits
Music - MJ Cole - Pictures in my head
Directed by - Nik Hill
3D artists - Electra, Lauren Galloway, Grace Barth
Production company - Twenty Third C
Special thanks - Denzyl at Platoon & Tom Street
Presenting CGS Fundamental - When CGsociety reached out looking for a motion designer to host an 8 week workshop I jumped at the chance! It felt only right to create a sequence incorporating all of the techniques we’re going to break down over the weeks of the workshop. It’s a mix of 3D/2D design and animation touching on basic motion graphics techniques. I learned most of my knowledge from tutorials and always found visual context to be a big inspiration and guide, let’s hope this does the same! The summer course is almost sold out, so move fast or sign up for the next one.
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Software used -
3D - Maxon C4D
2D and comp - Adobe After Effects
Render - Octane Renderer
The initial idea derived from a simple concept - explore the notion of 'division' through design and animation. As a loose idea I felt this would be a great way for each member of the team to creatively invest in there own section, with their own style that ultimately would be held together by the same common tread - things moving apart.
Going a little deeper, 2016 was a seemingly very divisive year, the media would have you believe. In many respects it was this sense of division in the media that put the concept at the forefront of my mind, but I wanted to explore it in an abstract way and ultimately create something positive. Create a world that hinted at this idea of division but where it would actually take you to higher dimensions and almost set you free.
When we spoke as a team the concept evolved into Division & Unity. Things dividing but becoming stronger together. Between the team we wrote a script aimed to drive the overall narrative of the piece. That would be come the backbone to create visual metaphors from.
Through various iterations of style frames and directions, I settled on a look and feel that went back to basics, techniques wise - using C4D's standard render and restricting myself to only 2 render passes and object buffers (Prizes for who guesses the 2 render passes). This meant I didn't get bogged down with render times and was able to render the entire sequence locally on one machine. Sometimes constraints force you to think differently. This piece was definitely an exercise in constraint, both visually and technically. The added beauty of eliminating the technical challenges was that it free'd up time to just focus on the flow of the orb.
The orb symbolises, you, me and ideas. It travels through 5 stages on it's journey through the abstract world - Birth, separation, division, inspiration, individuality.
Design and Direction - Nik Hill (created at Territory Studio for ODD NY)
Type animation - Daniel Hojlund
Production - Joy Whilby
View full credit list here
What started out as a passion project and a means to explore some new areas of design, evolved first in to a unisex jewellery brand, then over time in to a design studio specialising in Motion and Product design. One of our aims is to turn the digital in to the physical, be inspired by our surroundings and turn this in to physical products.
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Concept & design - Twenty Third C
twentythirdc.com
Shading, lighting and rendering - Raphael Rau
silverwing-vfx.de
Audio - Zelig Sound
zeligsound.com
Special thanks to those who've helped along this journey.
Dazzle ship reached out asking for some help designing frames for Drone Racing League. These were concepts inspired by the geometric forms the drones fly through when racing
The wonderful folks over at B-Reel commissioned me to come up with some concepts for HERE’s reality index globe. The aim was to create a visual language for and autonomous, connected world. These are a few iterations we went through.
Design and 3D - Nik Hill
Art direction - Sebastian Vizor
Producer - Neal Bryant
Client - Here
Working as part of the in-house team at Territory Studio I had the pleasure of designing screens for Joshi's office and K's spinner. It was an absolute honour to receive direction from Denis Villeneuve, he was so clear and forward thinking. My role was to help articulate certain key narrative points using screen graphics. Shout out to Abel and Ryan for the animation.
Check Territory Studio's website for full breakdown of the screens.
Produced at Territory Studio for Alcon Entertainment
Director : Denis Villeneuve
Production Designer : Dennis Gassner
Supervising Art Director : Paul Inglis
Director of Photography : Roger Deakins
Working as part of the in-house team at Territory Studio I was involved in various tasks from concept through to production of screen graphics for Avengers: Age of Ultron. My roles were predominantly 3D design, UI animation and design for Dr Cho and Banner sets. As well as this, I had to pick up various design and animation tasks throughout the project for Stark and other sets. I worked closely with the mighty Yugen Blake in creating lots of these screens.
I was also DOP for the showreel, which involved directing the shoot, setting up interesting compositions and filming all of our screens. I also designed and animated the title card.
Full Territory credit list here
Marvel Credits Director: Joss Whedon Production Designer: Charles Wood Set Decoration: Richard Roberts Art Director: Alan Payne VFX Supervisor: Christopher Townsend VFX Producer: Ron Ames
Working as part of the in house team at Territory Studio, my role as Senior Motion Designer was to design and animate 3D hero content for Peter Quill's Milano screens as well as animate a selection of the 2D UI elements. I also designed and animated the main control screen for VFX in the Milano. For Nova Prison my role was to design and animate 3D content and prepare computer screens for on-set playback. I also created some concept pre-visualisations for the organic Dark Aster interface.
Collaborators: Yugen Blake, Alasdair Willson, Marti Romances
Full Territory credit list available here
Marvel Credits Director: James Gunn Production Designer: Charles Wood Set Decoration: Richard Roberts Art Director: Alan Payne VFX Supervisor: Stephane Ceretti VFX Producer: Susan Pickett
Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis star in "Jupiter Ascending", an original science fiction action adventure from Lana and Andy Wachowski, the creators of The Matrix trilogy.
Territory was approached to work with The Wachowski's to produce animated screen graphics for Warner Bros.'s February 2015 release of the film. Production designer Hugh Bateup was interested in a unique view of the galaxy through graphic displays, and asked us to collaborate with his team.
My roles on this project included on-set support, 3D design and 2D animation.
WARNER BROS. CREDITS
Directors: Lana and Andy Wachowski
Production Designer: Hugh Bateup
Set Decoration: Peter Walpole
TERRITORY CREDITS
Production Company - Territory
Art and animation - Nik "nikill" Hill, Marti Romances, Yugen Blake, Gabor Ekes, Ryan Hays, Dave Penn
Creative Direction - David Sheldon-Hicks
Production - Sam Hart
PLAYBACK CREDITS
Compuhire
SHOWREEL CREDITS
Edit: Andy Schofield, Cristina Casanova
Audio: DJ Metatron - U'll Be The King Of The Stars
(C) 2015 Warner Bros. Pictures, Jupiter Ascending
Concept UI design for SPY.
Role: Art director, lead designer and animator
Full Territory credit list here
© Universal City Studios Productions LLLP 2015
Working as part of the in house team at Territory, I was responsible for Design, art direction, animation & 3D modelling for this sequence.
Territory Credits -
Concept: Marti Romances
Storyboard: Ian Palmer
Design, 3D Modelling and Animation: Nik Hill
Production: Sam Hart, Evdoxia Sardi
Working alongside the mighty Yugen Blake I helped Art direct, design and animate 3D content for audio powerhouse Zelig Sound's 2014 showreel opener.
The idea evolved from audio waveforms into a spacey, architectural, graphic world which we fly through to reveal pertinent quotes and eventually land on the Zelig end frame.
OFFF Cincinnati - Main Titles
After our conference at OFFF Barcelona 2015, the team were invited to talk at OFFF Cincinnati and produce the Main Titles for the festival. For some of the team members this was the first non commercial project they had participated in.
The concept behind the project was agreed early on in pre-production. We wanted the Titles sequence to reflect the core essence of the festival. Different creative studios and artists congregate in one place - the festival - to share, inspire and be inspired. We wanted to reproduce the OFFF logo in 3D and deconstruct it in a way that each piece could represent different artists. We all have unique styles and skill sets that feed designs into the world for everyone to enjoy. This ripples out, bounces around, inspiring and motivating us all to create new and even greater things. We constantly inspire each other across many different mediums and with this title our aim was to represent and visualise this symbiosis, whilst celebrating the convergence of artists. We wanted the project to be a learning experience, to push our boundaries and explore new territories. We tried Arnold, the new Cinema 4D render engine for the first time (Thanks to Raphael Rau for answering our Arnold queries). This achieved faster and more realistic results and we created a bespoke typography for this project.
Whilst comping and editing the piece, we thought that the story could be interpreted in many different ways by many different creative minds, so we decided to give people the chance to create their own version of the sequence using our renders and projects! And that's when we decided to make all of this material open source and create the site OFFF Cinci Remix, where everyone can now be part of it, play, explore and submit their own "remixes" of the piece. We want everyone to be involved in this project!
Feel free to grab the package and don't forget to send us your video link so we can post all of your sequence offfcinciremix.com
We want to thank all the OFFF family for letting us have such an amazing experience. Special thanks to Hector and Nathalie. And the guys from the CAC in Cincinnati who made us feel at home - thanks Drew.
Credits:
Marti Romances: Director / Compositer
Peter Eszenyi: Technical Director / 3D Artist
Nik 'Nikill' Hill: Art Director / 3D Artist
Daniel Højlund: Lead 2D Animator
Ryan Rafferty-Phelan: Concept & Development
Zelig: Audio
Behind the scenes music courtesy of ©: MODEL 86 - Swell
FMK Film, an assembly of seven concentrated film snippets that deconstruct and expand the logic, beauty and anguish trapped within each track of the 7 tracks on Matthew Wilcock’s debut EP, FMK / Floating Metal Key.
My role was to Art direct, design, animate and composite CGI content for the Battery Snap and Bent Dead sections.
Directed By
Dan Kokotajlo
Full FMK credit list available here
Working as part of the in house team at Territory, my role was to design and art direct a 3D facial tracking projection mapping project for live installation.
Territory credits -
Art Direction, Design & Animation: Nik Hill
3D Modelling & Animation: Nick Lyons, Duncan Dix
3D Animation: Chris White, Jay Dingle
Production: Joy Whilby
MILES is the story of a teenage dirt bike rider (Rasmussen) who stumbles upon M.A.X., an escaped prototype of the most advanced military creation in history. Miles explores M.A.X.’s abilities and the creature quickly develops into something fiercely loyal, intelligent and nearly unstoppable.
Territory were approached by director, Oliver Daly to help design and animate M.A.X.'s view of the world through a HUD display, holographic controls, and screen graphics for the military control room, and end titles for the film.
My role was to design, animate and edit the end credit sequence. It was super fast turn around so we explored the route of filming the UI designs, from the short, playing on our computer monitors, then tracked this footage into a 3D camera move.
Working as part of the in house team at Territory Studio along with the guys over at Alphabetical, my role in this project was to design, light and render stills for print and create setups that were ready to be animated.
Additional 3D modelling by Rachel Chu.
I also animated and composted a quick feature that can be found here.
Working as part of the in house team at Territory Studio alongside Microsoft's London team - Soho Productions, my role was to design and animate a concept logo reveal for Upload - a new gaming and entertainment experience for XBox One.
The lovely chaps over at WeAreSeventeen commissioned me to design and animate some idents and lower thirds for BT's online channel Film Fix.
Animation coming soon
Working as part of the in house team at Territory Studio, along with Axis animation - our task was to create the murky organic interior to Axis' Grey Goo molecule.
My roles were design, animation and compositing.
Here it is, the final project for my BA[Hons] Motion Graphics degree. It's an experimental piece based around Geometry, the cosmos and rhythm. Enjoy.
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Soundtrack - Ibmab by Nikill
Sound design - Liptical Optura
Forever and always
A introduction into contextualising my brain type [53% L] [47% R]
The first in a series of Geometric Op Art inspired style frames.
In partnership with Land Rover’s advanced research division and Ink, Territory designed and animated UI and motion graphics for three digital films showcasing the Vision Concept’s pioneering future technologies.
My role was senior UI animator.
Further versions and full credit list can be found here.
Territory was invited to collaborate with 5 other outstanding animation studios to create a 1 minute piece entitled "London's Hero 2013". Organised by Cut&Paste, sponsored by HP and hosted at pop-up studio ZED over a 3 week period, each studio was given just 5 hours to create a 10 second segment, and just a few frames from the previous teams animation to stitch theirs onto. Territory was given the 5th segment - Middle-Age.
Working alongside Marti Romances my roles were character designer, rigger and animator.
Full credit list can be found here.
Virgin Atlantic approached Territory asking us to design and animate a set of informative, character driven explainer animations showing customers how to use their on board Vera entertainment system.
The aim was to incorporate UI graphics with character animation to make a friendly, easy to understand piece. The biggest challenge for us artistically, was coming up with a style that remained on brand, echoing Art and Graft's beautifully crafted safety video, whilst also coming up with something that remained true to Territory.
In order to achieve this, we opted to push more of a hybrid route utilising 3D modelling and animation techniques, rendered with a 2D look and feel, with a bit of motion graphic styled animation transitions thrown in the mix too.
My main role in this project was to lead a small team of freelancers in order to execute the final four videos. I illustrated character concepts and worked with Rachel Chu to turn them into 3D models and was lead designer, rigger, animator and compositor.
Working with Factory311, Arsenal FC contacted us to create a series of stings for their online TV channel - Arsenal Player.
My roles were direction, camera operation, design, animation and compositing.
Check out the behind the scenes here.
Geometric exploration
Digital print from Tri Infinity piece
I was commissioned to paint two murals in Bristol Children's Hospital's cardiac ward. Part of the concept was to leave areas blank for children to colour in during their stay. We're installing perspex screens to so that the process can be enjoyed whilst the patient stays, but wiped off ready for the next.
Illustration commission for tech firm Mason Zimbler
Illustration commission
Acrylic on canvas
Ink and bleach portait
Ink and bleach portait
Ink and bleach portait