Brendan Cook : Director, Designer and Animator recently had the great pleasure to collaborate with director Aaron Petersen on his debut feature documentary Zach's Ceremony. Zach's Ceremony follows a young boys journey to becoming a man. Zach discovers his culture, his country and his responsibilities as an Aboriginal man in modern day Australia and shares his story with the world.

SLR Productions :  This award winning series is set in the timeless watercolour landscape of mossy forests, lazy rivers and sunny meadows that is the idyllic home of Little Nutbrown Hare and his father, Big Nutbrown Hare. Always ready to play and laugh, Little Nutbrown Hare bounds through his days with whisker–twitching curiosity. The ever patient Big Nutbrown Hare lovingly leads his son on journeys of discovery of the joys that nature holds. Fun–loving Little Field Mouse and mischievous Little Grey Squirrel often join them on their adventures and not too far away they might encounter tricky Little Redwood Fox, or Little White Owl with her tall tales of mystery and magic. Nearby they might nd Otter splashing in the river, or Blue Bird building a nest for her eggs. Together they explore the meadows, forests and streams… playing, laughing and discovering the wonder that the world holds. Keeping love as the major theme, each adventure has a particular season as its backdrop, the wild owers of Spring; the long, lazy days of Summer; the brilliant colours of Autumn or the frozen landscape of Winter.

Never sit still and Luxx : Adobe approached us to create the opening titles for their annual creative conference, Make It, which took place at Carriageworks in Sydney. The titles were played to a full house with 1400 people in attendance. The main imagery for the event was created as an isometric illustration by Shaivalini Kumar, an artist from New Dehli, India. We rebuilt all the elements in 3D, then rendered the scene using global illumination, a process that simulates light bouncing and colour bleeding. This technique gave us a highly stylised look, allowing the bright colours in the scene to emit light, and the dark colours to receive light. The music was composed specifically for this title sequence by Ben Romalis, who we worked very closely with throughout the entire process.

Rising Sun Pictures : X-Men: Apocalypse features more time-bending magic from Australia’s Rising Sun Pictures. The visual effects studio contributed to several key sequences in the film, most notably an electrifying scene where Quicksilver (Evan Peters) uses his hyper-speed ability to rescue students from an exploding mansion. Quicksilver’s Extraction builds on a notable scene from the preceding X-Men: Days of Future Past where the character races around a Pentagon cafeteria to prevent security guards from shooting a trio of X-Men. RSP’s impeccable work in making pots, pans, bullets and water drops freeze in mid-air helped the film earn an Academy Award ® nomination for Best Visual Effects. RSP created a number of other effects for the film including one where a young Cyclops accidentally destroys a tree that had been a favorite of Professor Xavier. The digital mansion that the studio built recurs at several points in the film. But for sheer energy and visual fun, Quicksilver’s Extraction is most likely to impress audiences. It’s a real show-stopper (no pun intended).

Mighty Nice : One of the really interesting challenges we had when creating the spots was developing a really rich 3D style that combined hyper real objects and brought them into the totally surreal world of Fandangles. We always find the best way to attack the early stages of story is with a pencil and paper (or at least their digital equivalents). So after catching up with the team at Leo Burnett we sat down and drew lots and lots of storyboards. We were determined capture the fun of the scripts while pushing our experience with visual comedy and story telling. To achieve the hyper-real feeling of the Fandangles world we carefully modelled the cows as tiny plastic toys and the cookies were intricate 3D scans of home cooked cookies, and the team developed all new methods of creating 3D fairy floss that could float and fly elegantly, not to mention burning marshmallow, elastic caramel and flying chocolate. Getting all of the details just right was crucial to achieving an immersive little universe while not letting the comedy down.

Yukfoo : An Animated Feature Film, Shirley and The Hungary Bear is the tale of a young man named Shirley who has lost everything—his parents, his wife and his voice—when a fugitive bear from Hungary moves in next-door. Set in the period between WWI and WWII and lovingly recreating the songs of the era, Shirley and The Hungary Bear is a heart-warming story about how a shared love of music can overcome the most tragic of circumstances. Director: Alan Dickson

Iloura : The Oscar's biggest winner was Mad Max: Fury Road, nominated for a total of ten Academy Awards, Fury Road went on to win six: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Editing, Best Sound Mix and Best Sound Editing. Iloura was specifically nominated with Iloura VFX Supervisor Tom Wood's nomination in the Visual Effects category, acknowledging the incredible work that the Iloura team did on the film. Iloura created the toxic storm sequence in the film, which recently earned a VES award, as well as the Citadel location and a host of other VFX features, completing over 1,600 visual effects shots in total. Congratulations to everyone involved for their staggering work and success with Mad Max: Fury Road!

Airbag : The Car vs Drones film is focused on visualizing the concept of Speed and Agility set within a cinematic battle of superiority between two nimble machines, a Holden Astra and a fleet of custom-designed Quadcopter Drones. Working with Vice and The Creator’s Project from the inception definitely influenced the treatment, lending the aesthetic more to a transparent lab experiment than a hyper-polished film. From the initial brief, they wanted all the components of the exercise revealed, from the Drone Pilots to the various Technologies on set, exposing the Lighting setups, the Camera rigs and Computer Monitors displaying each machine’s trajectory during the film. They wanted the film to be an entirely honest rendition of the experience the team went through during the filming process; and to the naked eye if a person entered the studio stage everything they would see was captured in the final film. From a stylistic standpoint, it was a natural choice to infuse Munko’s favorite medium into the equation, the element of Illumination. Light can be interpreted over time as a lateral, striking way to show speed when captured as a long-exposure — it’s the equivalent to a motion path in an animation program, it’s how we can quantify speed and maneuverability in an easily digestible visual representation. So they outfitted every machine in the film with addressable LEDs which allowed them to play with this exciting ingredient of light painting and the ability to manipulate their motion constructs, fully exploring form and composition which paved the way to an array of seductive visuals. These various techniques of light manipulation positioned this entire exercise more towards an art film than anything else, allowing the dramatic, abstract competition between the drones and the Astra to create a beautiful dance of light, form, color, performance and technology.

Ink Project : The creation of Ink’s fresh and vibrant branding for the new SBS Food Network channel is informed by the character of the content; slicing, dicing, stirring and sizzling. Live action idents have been created to reflect the energy and sounds of everyday food. SBS dishes up a 24/7 menu of everyday food inspiration with the launch of its new television channel dedicated to the world of food. The new channel, Food Network, is available to all Australians across the country for free.

Mighty Nice : ‘Bottersnikes and Gumbles’ features a rich, cinematic 3D world of odd characters and strange occurrences. We needed a title sequence that set the mood and tone for the show at large, but also brought something a little special to the beginning of the episodes.Animating using a 2D approach allowed us to use a very stylised storytelling. This gave us space to explore lots of ideas in a short space of time. We couldn’t do the same if we were constrained to the more visually dense CG style of the actual show. Another crucial goal was that the titles feel sophisticated and appeal to all ages. We had the 2D style of animation for the titles in mind for a number of years (start with the important decisions right?), and had always hoped Alex Grigg could direct. Alex had worked on the teaser animation and helped develop the show at initial stages. Darren also mentioned this 2D idea when he first met Desmond Digby, original illustrator of the books, he love this idea of course! During the development and pitching process Alex strove for a clean balance to the 3D-style of the episodes, while maintaining a unique style and tipping his hat to Desmond’s original designs. It’s fantastic to have seen it through to final stages with an amazing crew onboard. It is a part of the show at large that we are incredibly proud of and turned out better than we could have hoped.

Ink Project : is SL•VR first immersive cinema offering. Captured with specifically modified rigs and film cameras Firestarter is the next generation in film production for VR. 

Raoul Marks : A surreal trip. An allegory for the creative process and growth of an individual. From birth, to individuation, to criticality and finally to finding ones own creative space. Or, if preferred, just some fun times floating through the void.

Buck : Some of us at Buck grew up eating Cadbury chocolate and some of us grew up eating Oreo cookies. Appropriate then that we would collaborate across offices on this bromance between those two tasty treats as they take us on a tour of the land down under. We had Double the Yum and Double the Fun working alongside Saatchi and Saatchi Sydney on this film.