ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Artist Josh Goble (josh@joshgoble.com) recently took top honors in a video competition presented by CG Society and The Foundry. The contest challenged participants to create a :60, broadcast-style spot that makes use of The Foundry’s tools, yet followed a specific creative mission — one that playfully looks at a future product from the manufacturer: a time machine.
Goble went to school for advertising and design, and also studied 3D, enrolling in Maya classes. One of his first jobs in the post industry was working at animation studio Bandelier EFX.
“I learned a ton,” he says of the experience, noting the opportunity to work on commercials for the local market in New Mexico and even South America. When the studio’s owner Allan Stevens retired, he joined his son, Tim Stevens, at Stevens Animation. Goble would later work as a freelancer, and today, works at Reelz Channel in Albuquerque. He is skilled in the Adobe Creative Suite, Maya, Cinema 4D, Modo and Nuke. While he uses a Mac at Reelz — creating show graphics and sizzle reels — his home studio is all Windows-based, and includes a 50-core render farm.
His experience working on a number of film competitions inspired him to give the CG Society contest a whirl. “I found it on the Web through sheer dumb luck,” he recalls. “A friend of mine worked at Sony and was always talking about Modo. I worked on a few 48-hour film projects and saw him use it, and it looked cool. It looked like how a modeling package should work.”
The competition, he felt, would be a perfect opportunity to get more acquainted with Modo without the pressure of having a paying client looking over his shoulder. He teamed up with director/writer/producer David Ferry Jr. for the production and assembled a small team of additional local talent.
The team came up with an original concept. The spot features a young man, out on a date. He proposes to his girlfriend, but when things don’t go as planned, he uses a time machine to give it a second try. The machine has its flaws and the date goes from bad to worse, dragging up other bad dates from the past. The solution, the spot suggests, would be to use The Foundry’s new and technologically-sound time machine.
“Our main goal was to treat it like it was a real job,” Goble recalls.
They spent approximately one month planning and boarding the spot, and shot it all in one day. Ariel Rakes served as DP, shooting in 4K with a Sony FS-700, and capturing footage to an Odyssey 7Q external recorder.
“The footage looked amazing. It was extremely clean,” notes Goble.
Since the spot had been well storyboarded, Goble knew exactly where the VFX and graphics would go. Ferry cut the project in Adobe Premiere, and Goble later applied the VFX transitions. He worked at 2K making the assets and motion graphics, knowing it would ultimately be delivered in 720p.
“I went with 2K,” he explains, “knowing it would be good enough and not kill render times.” He secured a beta license of Vray for Modo to handle the rendering.
Marc Leonard applied color correction and Ferry laid in the audio. Tim Stevens of Stevens Animation helped in providing sound effects. He also contributed valuable feedback, adds Goble.
As the winner of the contest, Goble received free copies of The Foundry’s Modo, Nuke, Mari and Hiero.
“There’s no way I would have been able to get it to look as nice without all my friends’ help on it,” he adds.