rebellion

the new
noise

the
client

Rebellion is a new music label that’s positioning themselves as a disruptor in the space. They’re hungry and determined to create a music industry that works for artists. Something you can’t say that about most of the big labels out there right now.

simplified message

The new sound in the music industry.

product
visualization

Rebellion’s bold new branding called for personality and lots of it. So we created their iconic logo in 3D across various different pillows that the crane machine can interact with. Their bold vision for the web design (in partnership with Beyond Studios) lead to an interactive, fully CGI claw machine being built out in 3D.

A pinkish-red neuron with branching dendrites on a black background.

A shiny, metallic, abstract sculpture with sharp, pointed extensions against a black background.

A starfish with five arms on a light background.

A close-up image of a Sea Star, a star-shaped marine animal with multiple long, pointed arms, against a plain background.

design
challenges

A robotic claw inside a machine releasing several white biological cells or neurons onto a surface.

I crane rigging

What started out as a simple project quickly became complex. Setting up the crane to animate in X, Y and Z axis with animation controls for the translation, swing, individual arm controls and cable simulation required a ton of organization to stay manageable. Hand-animating the movement of each with each iteration of the physics was no small task to say the least.

Robotic claws manipulating animal-like figures, one pink and others metallic, inside a machine enclosure.

II physics simulations

By far the biggest surprise was the difficulty of getting the unique shape of the pillows to act rationally with the subtle physics we needed from them. My instincts to add a more crowded composition with layered deformation from each added a level of complexity that was shocking. Getting the arms to stay rigid while having some flex on the overall shape confounded me and 2 other Houdini experts I brought in to help. Something about this shape made the softbody dynamics required a real puzzle that needed to be solved. In the end I needed to utilize an ungodly number of tricks and custom deformations to make this act in a way that was convincing.

An image showing a large, pink starfish inside a scientific or industrial chamber with metal walls, along with multiple metallic objects resembling animal skulls or bones.

III modeling, texturing and lighting

To match the styleframes provided exactly, we modeled the whole claw machine from scratch from the box to buttons. Each pillow itself was modeled and remodeled until the physics worked, requiring new Substance Painter textures each time. Finally once the pillows and crane animations worked in harmony I textured every element of the machine from scratch in Substance painter, down to the coin that kicks off the animation. Despite the locked composition for most of the shots, a massive amount of time and effort was spent getting every asset up to scratch.

visual
design

By far, most of the time and effort was spent wrestling with the physics of the pillows. Re-animating the crane around each iteration of the simulations from Houdini was no small feat either. But once those were locked, it was alot of fun lavishing each element of the claw machine with custom texture detail in Substance Painter. The contrasting textures of the 4 types of pillows really was quite fun to dial in once the animation side of things was resolved.