VCCP recently selected Stanley’s Post to create the iconic Grolsch bottle from speakers for the print component of the ‘speaker bottle’ campaign. CG artist Alan Murray tells us how he went about it.
What was the challenge here?
Working to an image given to me by the client I was tasked with constructing the bottle from speakers and the set around it. Each speaker was different and so I made each one separately and then built the bottle with them. The challenge with creating an entirely 3D thing from a 2D image is always in thinking about angles and getting the form right. It was a bit like Lego, if with Lego you had to make the bricks yourself too…
Where did you start?
I looked at real speakers I’d found online and saw how they were constructed. I started testing things and then started building speakers before putting each one into the model to see if it would work. Some I repurposed by using them as a base model for others but a lot of them are built from scratch.
You’re a successful still life painter, do you use these skills in your CG work?
It was a bit like a still life shot in some ways. You’ve got to create the product using elements and lighting to give it form. With a moving image you’ve got all the stuff going on, sparks or whatever and as it moves along you see the whole story but in a still you have to capture certain things in one shot only. The same as with a painting, you need to simplify it so that when you look at it you can take it in. There are different points of beauty in different areas, there was the scope to try and make it look like a piece of art.
Lighting was obviously important. What were the considerations here?
There’s a lot going on because the bottle’s backlit from the inside and there are ‘projected’ lights also. The set had to be a warmer colour. Obviously the bottle was green but in trying to avoid it not looking like a green light had been shone on the set. It’s all quite hyperreal rather than photographically real. It’s got it’s own reality.