By Sam Chambers | Design Lead @ Motion Marble
It’s important to stretch your creative legs in this industry. Inspiration can come from anywhere. Maybe it’s from seeing work in the wild, or whilst stirring your morning coffee. Sometimes even at 3AM after a vivid dream. After these moments, as a creative, it’s important to act on it. This is why the quieter moments are just as important as the busy ones. It allows us to play with new tech, learn from each other and sharpen our creative brains. Which ultimately helps us keep the bar high for our clients.
My creative brain is constantly firing. I constantly want to make visually striking content that’s intertwined with a feeling or a story. One time whilst in the car, I had this idea around the experience of driving from the point of view of a car enthusiast. The thrill and excitement of getting behind the wheel of a car you love is a privilege. That sensation of pressing the pedals, the noise, the sense of being in the pilot seat of a machine that’s your ultimate pride and joy. So I challenged myself to produce piece of work that illustrates that feeling. The term “Street Pilot” rang in my head. And once I had the name, the rest of the project started to come together.
I thought of a story that was personal to my experience, and represented it with some sketches. Cinematic camera angles of a parked car being started from cold. The light illuminating the freshly cleaned bodywork before driving away. Perhaps after a long day, which enhances that feeling of freedom. From our office, we constantly have different views of cars driving past and we can hear the roar of distant engines. So real-world, cinematic reference wasn’t hard to come by once we knew what we were looking for.
I went on the hunt for some 3D models and came across an NA1 Honda NSX (credit linked) that was screaming to be the star of the show. After some model editing, scene building and storyboarding, things started to take shape. But I wanted to push it further. I described my vision to the team, who got involved to produce animated illustrations (Hadyn) and some scenes in Unreal Engine with 2D overlays (Sam) and we were away. Their individual creative personalities were essential to add a completely different dimension to the project. It no longer became a film about my sole experience, but also about theirs.
During our research period (inside and outside of the working day), we developed a series of shots using some new techniques we’d learned, and then edited it together so it followed a narrative. I built the project timeline with the sound in mind. Singing the echo of a distant engine, mentally humming the ambient noise of traffic, comically mimicking the creak of a garage door opening, and timing that to the scene so it fit together with what was in my head. Spending the time on the sound design was essential to make the world we created come alive.
Honda themselves have a rich history of iconic car ads. Even their tagline “The Power of Dreams” encapsulated the feeling I was trying to convey with this animation. So as a bit of a love letter to our industry and to demonstrate how we could produce a project such as this for real, we gave it some Honda branding at the end. As if it was a real ad for the Honda driving experience.
We’re proud to share this short, and thanks to Hadyn Thompson and Sam Wainwright for taking the time (sometimes, even their own time) to help me shape this into something we can all be proud of.
Watch it on our Instagram!
3D Model from Ddiaz Design on Sketchfab
