Acura

"Same World. New Energy"

Final spot

The Brief

In 2022, I was brought onboard another project with the legendary director Dave Mayers. The agency was MullenLowe Los Angeles, and we collaborated very closely with the creative director Ty Hayward. Awesome guy — and a huge experience for me to communicate ideas back and forth with him. We worked on the art direction with Thomas Scarlett, splitting the tasks. VFX Supervisor was Jan Malíř, our CEO at UPP Advertising.

The story was based around the idea of a multiverse. Each world had a distinct style, and our main hero Chiaki was jumping between these universes through portals — every time with a different appearance and a different car. The electric energy connecting these universes culminates in an all-new electric Acura vehicle. We have a sci-fi dystopian industrial world, a cyberpunk world, a suburbs world (in the style of Keeping up with the Joneses), then an alien moon world with purple crystals, an anime world, a dreamlike nature world, and finally the electric space void — very cool brief! But… how the hell are we gonna create that? :)

The Process

Dave was working again with One Pixel Brush for concept art. So we were suplied by the concept art Blender scenes when the director was happy with the visuals. They did most of the environments, and then we took over some of them for finishing on our side. Timing was very tight, and lots of post work had to be designed, thought out, tried (and abandoned) — and then produced the VFX to make the deadline.

Concept art by One Pixel Brush

I knew my task was going to be eventually the previz. Wasn’t sure for how many shots, but it basically meant I had to dive deep into shit tons of car video references. Movies, music videos, car commercials — anything with cool driving and car choreography. I never really liked cars, but I totally fell in love with high-speed car cinematography. Of course, the Pennzoil commercials were a huge inspiration, as any car buff already knew a hundred years ago…

Previz clips from the project

I was working in UE5 with other Unreal artists, who helped with optimizing the scenes for virtual production and having some car animation ready to shoot with the virtual camera. We were juggling many aspects of the visuals back and forth with Thomas, like developing the portal designs, the neighborhood layouts, the industrial factory, and many others.

The Industrial World

Initially, this was supposed to be a high-speed chase with killer drones chasing our main hero, but the idea was scrapped eventually. We needed to open the commercial with a long flying shot showing the factory and then going to the hero vehicle. I did initial versions of the shot animation, but ultimately the shot was created using the virtual camera operated by Jan Malir and simulating an FPV drone kind of shot — speed, speed, speed!

The environment was designed by OPB and we enhanced it with fuckloads of industrial assets, leveraging the industrial pack from Big Medium Small — love their stuff! Absolute beasts. The 3D lead for this was Alexander Muller and he was very much enjoying placing tiny railings and lights everywhere — not that they are at all visible in the final shot, but you know, artists gotta enjoy themselves 🙂

Behind the scenes by UPP Advertising

I really like this sequence, because anytime there is industrial porn on the screen, I’m a happy guy. The sequence was a mix of full CG shots with real live-action shots from some kind of warehouse. The ending shot was tricky to do and I had to figure out a way to do a car slide through the portal and continue on the other side with a different car and a new environment — but never pass a chance to dutch the camera when the situation calls for it!

The Cyberpunk World

We worked on the character glitch transitions with Jan Kopecký for all the portals. The idea was to quickly switch the faces and worlds and keep the momentum going.

I worked on the tunnel sequence after the transition. It was a blend of virtual camera shoot and hand-animated shots. I also tried to figure out the previz editing, which held up mostly till the last edit lock.

Awesome work by our 3D artist on the cyberpunk city details, by the way. And compers! Never forget the rescue work of the compers!

The Suburbs World

We had to create a very sudden change in pace and style going from the cyberpunk tunnel. So the car bursts through another portal through a garage in a very weird suburb with neverending rows of houses. I helped with figuring out the street layout and how to showcase the iconic American cul-de-sacs with some basic concept art and overpaints. The layout system itself was developed in Houdini by Ricardo Tinchelli.

In the story, the car bumps into the camera, which shatters the lens, and the camera itself crashes through another portal into the alien moon world. I was responsible for the effect development and timing, and also for final composition.

The Alien Moon

I had very little to do with this sequence, because all plates were shot and it was in the very good hands of our Head of 3D, David Pekarek. Enhaced the original concept from OPB with neverending sculpt and Houdini environment magic! 🙂

The Anime World

We had nothing to do with this sequence — we got it delivered finished and only put it into the final edit. But I love this part so much! Way back I studied animation, so anytime I see a studio actually making it in the industry doing classic animation — huge respect! The name is The Line Studio — they are absolute fucking beasts! They did an animated series of short episodes for the Acura brand, featuring the Chiaki character and her journey. The only thing we have implemented from the anime world was the blue flower at the end - making it a visual connection going from anime to "real".

The Dream World

I enjoyed this one a lot. I did the previz for the full CG shots, where I could leverage what I’ve learned from the car references. I collaborated as well with the VFX Supervisor and our 3D artist Adam Pizurny on the look of the world, the road, and trees etc.

I also comped the shot where the two heroes blend — from the anime face to the live action racer — another visual "residue" of the anime world. Then the final shot of the race car going into the portal used heavily the awesome Electricity pack from Triune Digital and was comped by our Head of 2D at the time, Michal Šverma.

In the shot, where the race car goes into the big portal, we could also show most prominently the idea of the portal design — the outside layers are refracting light in a diamond pattern — mimicking the front grill of the final Acura electric prototype car.

The Electric Void

I comped the shot of the five versions of our hero line up with help of motion designer Daniel Bobek. That was some After Effects fun right there. The 5 characters merge together and then we go into the electric space void finale.

The final shot shows the car emerging from electricity was prevized with a virtual camera but heavily stabilized and hand-animated over it because we needed a very precise camera move. The background had space and nebulas going into the distance (which almost killed our farm :) and I did some overpaints to help our compositors achieve the final look.

The Conclusion

Huge crazy project and a learning curve for me. Again, I was very happy for the opportunity and enjoyed the broad span of responsibilities. I was most invested in the car previz shots, so that got me thinking about making more automotive stuff in Unreal.

We actually won the ADC Czech Creative Award for the commercial, so you can check some of the other credits of people working on it and more behind the scenes! Cheers.

Thanks for checking out the project!