The Mill New York brought a new hi-tech world to life for Marriott, as the hotel chain launches the first fully adaptable hotel room. The Mill computer graphics is showcased in three spots featuring three different aspects of the new room.

The innovative rooms contain a plugin panel to broadcast digital sources, such as Pc’s, game systems, Mp3 players and cameras onto the TV monitor and through the audio system. The core of two of the spots is an animated cube symbolizing this multi-functional plug-in station. Director Matthias Hoene worked with CG supervisor and Animator Ben Smith to conceptualize a cube that quickyly adjusts to whatever function is needed.

Based on Matthias’s reference of a magical Rubik cube, Ben and the Mill CG team created a multi-directional cube that flips and turns as if it has a personality of its own. The team even went as far as to personalize the cubes’s character in each spot, creating a more feminine, dance-like cube in ‘MP3’ and giving more masculine, structural traits to the cube in ‘Laptop’.

Activity in typically stagnant pieces spread to the surroundings of the hotel rooms as well. In two spots, The Mill recreated furniture and choreographed sequences to make the fixtures fold over in different directions before disappearing. Likewise, the Mill CG team built rapidly folding tv screens for the third spot, ‘Picture in Picture’.

By using the actual waveform from the audio, Ben let the music drive the animation of the CGI speakers in the spot entitled ‘MP3’. The shifting wall was another entertaining aspect of the piece that was driven by the audio. Animator Oscar Gonzalez wrote a procedural system to create different layers of animation so that Ben could play around with a range of variables to choreograph assorted patterns in the 3d wall.

Flame Artist Alex Lovejoy composited together many of the CG elements, while combining various segments from multiple motion control passes. Alex was a key figure in the creative process, layering components together, producing seamless transitions and generating set extensions. He even fine-tuned the look of the soccer footage that displayed on the HD screens of ‘Picture in Picture’. Since the footage was shot at standard-definition, Alex performed extensive beauty work to clean up the film and give it a hi-definition-like quality.

The campaign is currently airing on ESPN, CNN, Fox and the Discovery Channel.

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The Mill, London
40-41 Great Marlborough Street
Soho, London W1F 7JQ
+44 20 7287 4041
[email protected]

The Mill, New York
451 Broadway 5th floor
New York NY 10013
+1 212 337 3210
[email protected]