Smearballs

KFC Virtual Influencer Webby award

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 16:27:00 +0000

This happened a while ago but I was happy to hear that the ad campaign I produced, directed and executed for KFC and Wieden+Kennedy called Virtual Influencer Colonel Sanders won a Webby award for Best use of Social Media.

Juno Nomination

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 15:45:00 +0000

I got the crazy news last week that I was nominated for a Juno award for Music Video of the Year for my work creating 'Pomegranate' for deadmau5 & the Neptunes. This is a pretty huge category spanning all genres and video styles so I am super honoured to be nominated in this category. Big ups to my pals Davy Force and David Ariew for helping out on the video. It was kind of an insane amount of work crammed into 2 months and I nearly burned myself out making this thing so it's pretty rad to see the hard work pay off with a nomination like like this.

New music vid I made for deadmau5 & The Neptunes drops today!

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 15:55:00 +0000

I'll be chatting with Joel this morning before the launch of a new music video I made for deadmau5 and The Neptunes for the track Pomegranate.

This is the 3rd music video I've made for him in the past few years. I went a little cleaner this time with a full CG approach where the other 2 were shot and composited hybrids. The job took about 54 days from start to finish. I began on May 1st and put in well over 700 hours plus countless rendering hours as I slept which was a bit insane but worked out during the pandemic lock down. Nothing else to do anyway.

My pal Davy Force helped with some 3D modeling and animation. David Ariew from Ariew Visuals rocked some 3D environments and I did the lion's share of the building and animation as well as directing and producing it.

The video was made entirely in Cinema4d and rendered using Octane. I did minimal color correction in After Effects and some car painting in Substance Painter.
Jules Urbach and the team from OTOY helped out with access to the RNDR network where we rendered a big chunk of the video remotely. The majority of the video was rendered in my studio with the help of Joel's GPU server which I almost bricked by updating the bios like an idiot in the middle of production (long story) but it all worked out and I got it back online after a sleepless night. But it took 15 GPUS a combiunation of 3 1080tis, 3 2080tis, 1 titanXp, and 8 Quadro GP100s about a month to render this video along with 10 or 15% of the video rendered on the RNDR network.

All in all I'm happy with how it turned out on a tight deadline and I managed to finish a week early. No revisions from the mau5trap team or from the Neptunes which is rare and amazing.

Video drops here:

New album FLUSTERCUCK

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 15:36:00 +0000

https://smearballs.bandcamp.com/album/flustercuck

Here's an album I dropped a couple months ago. It's mostly remixed acapellas with a couple instrumentals, and it's free.

KFC VIRTUAL INFLUENCER

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 16:15:00 +0000

I produced and directed this campaign for KFC where we transformed Colonel Sanders into a virtual Influencer on Instagram. I teamed up with the super talented Dan Roarty of Roarty Digital on the character model. The model was created in Maya. I did all the posing and rendering in Maya using Arnold Render. The compositing was done in Photoshop and After Effects.
We worked with the team at Wieden + Kennedy to bring him to life and get all the desired hair and facial details dialed in. I hired a body double and shot at various locations in Los Angeles. Combining the real body with the CG head was a great way to achieve the desired realism with the budget at hand. We built a character rig with clothing and used the CG body in a few shots but most were composited with our body double.

The Virtual Colonel took over the KFC Instagram for the better part of a month.

NAB Maxon Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 16:01:00 +0000

I had the pleasure of presenting for Maxon at NAB this year. I cracked open some past projects and talked process. Skip that car thing I fucked up :)

Big Green Mug Interview

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 15:58:00 +0000

My pal Jon Hutton from Big Green Mug came by my studio last year and interviewed me for his new series.

FITC 2019

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 15:54:00 +0000

The Media is the Medium with Nick DenBoer from FITC on Vimeo.

Here's my presentation at FITC 2019. I talk about video remix, my work on Conan, some bts info on deadmau5, old spice, KFC projects.

deadmau5 - Drama Free (feat. Lights)

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:54:00 +0000

Another music video I made for deadmau5 just hit the toobs. I had way less time to pull this one off than Monophobia but it turned out pretty well all things considered. I shot Lights at my studio back in late August and got tons of great footage. The exterior shots are spots I shot around Toronto. All the animation and motion tracking was done in Cinema4d, rendered with Octane and comped in After Effects. I went over to Joel's (deadmau5's) place to use his ridiculously massive GPU farm to render a few sequences, but mostly rendered on my 2 desktop machines which got a hell of a workout for a few weeks burning 24/7. One more project and I'm finally wrapping a crazy year of nonstop work!

deadmau5 - Monophobia video

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 22:28:00 +0000

Here's a music video I made for deadmau5. This was a long time in the making. I shot it last Summer with Kenny Hotz and Joel, and then chipped away at sequences in between jobs for months. Joel had a badass drone and shot all the aerial footage. I shot the rest on my Ursa mini and took spherical HDRI photos of every scene with a ricoh theta which was used for lighting and backgrounds on closeups. The whole video was done in Cinema4D, and rendered in Octane. I composited in After effects, edited in Premiere. It's also all rendered in 4k which made it a bit of a pain in the ass but looks dope at full res. Props to Joel and the team at Mau5trap for making this a super fun project with no rules.

2018 Showreel

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 14:28:00 +0000

Finally had time this year to make a new reel. It's been a busy few years since my last compilation and I've done a lot of advertising, film and television work for some great clients. Notable stuff in this clip show - A new music video for deadmau5 that is supposed to drop this week, along with tour visuals for him as well, a few Old Spice & KFC ads I did for Wieden+Kennedy, "Kuso" - a Sundance feature film by Flying Lotus that I did VFX for, A couple of Adult Swim projects, Superdeluxe clip of Sean Spicer vomiting urine, Some of my old Conan work, My Sundance / TIFF-featured short film "The Chickening", and other random smearballer bologna.

KFC - Welcome to the Comfort Zone

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 17:14:00 +0000

Here's a new project I directed and produced for KFC with Wieden + Kennedy. It's a deeply enlightening chicken pot pie-based meditation system. Wieden + Kennedy approached me a few weeks ago to do this with a seemingly impossible deadline and miraculously, I assembled a team of superhuman video and audio wizards and we pulled off 6 videos, over 35 minutes of animated psychedelic chicken pot pie content in only 12 days. My production company, Generic Versatility inc took on the whole project, we rocked a green screen shoot on January 5th and dove into post the following day. It was a crazy marathon but after putting in 200+ hours in 12 days, it all came together. Special thanks to all my pals who came together to make this happen and to my friends at Wieden + Kennedy for cooking up this crazy project. . That was a crazy amount of work in a short period of time, and a fun experiment in hypno-chicken mind control.

CREDITS
Client: KFC
Project Name: KFC’s Comfort Zone: A Pot Pie – Based Meditation System
Format: Branded Content
Client Contact: George Felix, Mary Ellen Scott
Launch Date: 1/18/18
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy, Portland
Executive Creative Directors: Eric Baldwin, Jason Bagley
Creative Directors: Jarrod Higgins, Freddie Powell
Art Director: Matthew Carroll
Copywriter: Shaine Edwards
Executive Producer: Sue Kim
Producer: Eddye Borgese
Account Management: Jesse Johnson, Rob Archibald, Steve Smith, Spencer Crain
Strategy : Britton Taylor, Scott Woodhouse, Matt Hisamoto , John Dempsey
Media: Kelsey Bozanich, Anjali Patel
Director of Business Affairs: Amber Lavender
Creative Manager: Jane Monaghan
Studio Designer: Danielle McCoy
Production Company: Generic Versatility
Director / Producer / VFX artist / Animator: Nick DenBoer
AD / VFX Supervisor: Davy Force
VFX Artist / Animator: David Ariew
VFX Artist / Animator: Brian Eagan
VFX Artist / Animator: Fezz Stenton
Camera & Lighting / Editor: Tyler Grace
Camera & Lighting: Adam Buckley
Audio Tech / Sound Designer / Composer: Nate Mills
Producer: Raquel Rose
Stylist: Kate Easterbrook
Talent: Tim Beresford

Some press:

ADWEEK: KFC Made Some Very Weird Relaxation Videos to Help You Deal With Life in America Today

Fast Company: Top 5 ads of the week

Ad Age / Creativity Online: KFC'S MEDITATION PROGRAM ENCOURAGES YOU TO BE ONE WITH POT PIE

OCTANE RENDER COMPILATION

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 20:08:00 +0000

I made a compilation of recent experiments in cinema 4d rendered in Octane.

Salmon Pit

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 13:35:00 +0000

Make fish think twice before migrating into your armpits with Old Spice Bearglove Invisible Spray.

A post shared by Old Spice (@oldspice) on Jun 23, 2017 at 2:46pm PDT

First of 5 short spots I made for Old Spice earlier this year. Agency - Wieden + Kennedy

Tracy From Tim Hortons

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 16:16:00 +0000

I bought a Surface Book a little while back and have been getting back into drawing after a many year hiatus. I'm using Clip Studio Paint software with lots of additional brushes and getting some pretty nice / realistic paint results.

Punchy McPunchface

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 14:23:00 +0000

Punchy McPunchface from Nick DenBoer on Vimeo.

Here's a little render test using softbody dynamics in Cinema4D with Octane rendering.

Obergurgl ski video

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:14:00 +0000

Here's a video I made earlier this year with The Viral Factory for a ski resort in Austria. Had a great time shooting there with cast & crew, despite learning the hard way that I'm not a very good skier. All the tracking, camera solve and 3D animation was done in Cinema4D. Additional compositing and vfx in After Effects.

OLD SPICE REMIX

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 13:01:00 +0000

The good folks at Wieden + Kennedy got me to remix a bunch of their crazy Old Spice spots. The source footage was pretty surreal to begin with so at first it was a bit tough to decide where to take it. The line is a bit blurry as to where the original insanity and the new mix together, but all in all it shaped up to be a pretty cool vid. The WK creative team was on the level and made for great collaborators. I got to make the music for this too which I haven't done much of lately so it was really nice to get back in the remix game.

MUSIC VIDEO

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 17:36:00 +0000

Here's a music video I made for my pals Run With The Kittens. Whole thing was shot, edited and comped in 3 days. Cheap 'n dirty, but a fun project. Shot it all in half time and sped up the footage.

PARTY TIME

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:55:00 +0000

Here's a little test animation I made using Adobe Fuse / Mixamo & Cinema 4D.

Fuse is a pretty amazing character creation tool where you can customize 3D models and export them to Mixamo where you can then apply motion capture sequences to the models. They import flawlessly to Cinema 4D where I motion tracked a clip of my garage and inserted the party people.

PARTY TIME! from Nick DenBoer on Vimeo.

Pretty awesome results and super easy to do.

TROOMPA LOOMPA

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 17:15:00 +0000

BRUGHGHGHGLUGH

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 20:10:00 +0000

THE CHICKENING HAS CHICKENED

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:31:00 +0000

Here it is, finally uploaded. It's been a crazy festival run and now it's time to see where this takes us. The internet response has been overwhelmingly positive and it gives me confidence that this is an idea that people want to see more of. The Chickening has chickened!

TURD CRUZ

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 01:17:00 +0000

VICE Political Ads

noreply@blogger.com (smearballs) — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 18:25:00 +0000

Vice hired me to skewer all 3 of the major political candidates in the upcoming Canadian federal election. I busted these out pretty quickly since the election is less than a week away, but I'm happy with the result.