This is another TV commercial we just recently finished for Caspian Prestige Motor Oils.

This spot is also being aired on IRIB national TV during the World Cup games transmission.

The spot is a 30 second commercial for PAL D1 diffusion and took approximately two months to complete.

Concepts, storyboards and story reels were done by Kian Kiani. We have included the storyreel so that you can compare it with the final product; as you can see the client changed a lot of details

Caspian storyboard

There was also some pre-production concepts done by Faraz Shanyar.

Environment concept

by Faraz Shanyar

The spot was directed by Arezoo Ghandi and Faraz Sayyadi was in charge of the animation, shading, lighting, rendering and compositing.

Environment modeling and liquid simulations were all created by Reza Ramezani.

Caspian logo front

Caspian logo perspective

Editing the spot was done by Arezoo Ghandi and Bahram Najand.

We hope you enjoy this post and would appreciate any comments you may have.

Whether you are working as a freelance at home,  a small business or working in a large corporation, the way you handle your responsibilities and your work load has a direct effect on your personal life. Productivity is an important issue during our day to day routines, particularly in the animation and entertainment industries where processes are time-consuming and detail-oriented. Some projects may last up to 3 years and more and the amount of data generated may surpass trillions of bytes. So how can we find a way to enjoy our daily workload, plan for future projects and collaborate effectively in a stress-free manner?

The following is a list of some of the best blogs on personal and professional productivity and although each one of them is geared towards a specific nature of the subject, they all manage to give you a clear roadmap and insights into how to conduct your life with the best use of your time in order to obtain the best results.

Personally I am a firm believer in David Allen’s method called “Getting Things Done” and his book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” but it’s just my personal choice. He has a lot of other very useful stuff he sells on his site which are all geared towards making you more productive.

I have to stress one point and that is there is no magic formula or exact recipe to becoming a productive person and don’t expect to find your way by reading these blogs or books. These sites will give you a lot of useful information, roadmaps and methodologies but in order to make best use of all this info you will need to find the methodology or procedure that suits you most and then tweak it to suit your way of life and most importantly, STICK TO IT!!

1. David Allen’s GTD Times (http://www.gtdtimes.com/)

This blog is mostly geared towards David Allen’s methodology called Getting Things Done based on his world-famous book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” and although the articles may not be that enlightening all the time they provide some great podcasts that explain their method.

1. Freelance Folder (http://freelancefolder.com/)

Great blog for freelance writers, web developers and designers but contains a wealth of information on personal productivity

1. Freelance Switch (http://freelanceswitch.com/)

Very similar to Freelance Folder and a great resource; part of the Envato group that brings you ThemeForest and other great sites.

1. Life Optimizer (http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/)

Life Optimizer is about how to live life to the fullest through personal growth.

1. Marc and Angel Hack Life (http://www.marcandangel.com/)

Lots of practical tips to lead a productive life

1. Productive Flourishing (http://www.productiveflourishing.com/)

This site has very good articles and provides a set of free monthly planners that are very well thought out and useful.

1. Illuminated Mind and Body (http://www.illuminatedmind.net/)
2. Wake Up Later (http://www.wakeuplater.com/)
3. Persuasive (http://www.persuasive.net/)
4. Seth’s Blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/)

And last but not least, Seth Godin’s blog which is more geared towards marketing but does include some productivity tips from time to time and is always a great read.

Hope you enjoy this post and please include any other sites which you think should have been included in this post.

We have just recently finalized a TV commercial for TarOMar flying insect killer product and it will be shown before and after every football game during the World Cup football matches on IRIBTV. The client (Fouman Chimie) wanted us to create an action-filled 30 second long commercial based on a theme they have used in the past to good effect in their marketing.

The ad will be aired for the first time on June 16th 2010 before the South Africa — Uruguay match that takes place at 23:00 local Tehran time. Hope you enjoy it.

The project had a few complex shots which included transformation of the insecticide can into the protagonist robot, shooting blue screen scenes and compositing them into the CG environment and creating a believable CG space where all the action took place.

So here is the initial storyboard as well as some color and lighting tests, done by Kian Kiani, we created for this film which is pretty close to the final result.

TarOMar storyboard 01

TarOMar storyboard 02

And here are some color keys for the room environment:

Color key 01

Color key 02

The rigging and animations were done by Saman Khorram, Bahram Najand was in charge of the layout, shading, lighting and rendering in Max 2009 using Mental Ray.  Adib Souly created the smoke, explosion and rocket effects using mostly Softimages particle and ICE system and the effects were composited in post using Fusion. Faraz Sayyadi did the compositing using Fusion and the most time-consuming shots were the radar-like user interfaces that had to be created and animated layer by layer.The final movie was re-cut and edited by Ali Chenari and Bahram Najand who also took care of the sound effects.

You can see some of the shots of the interior we created here in this post.

We would really appreciate receiving any feedback, comments or critiques on this work so please tell us what you think.

The Annecy International Animation Festival launched yesterday and is currently celebrating its 50th birthday! This is the world’s largest event solely dedicated to animation.The event consists of an animation competition, conferences and a film market (MIFA), in a rather friendly atmosphere where you can meet enthusiasts, professionals, major players and new talents.

You can check out the festival trailer here: Annecy Animation Festival Trailer.

As some of you may have noticed we have recently changed the layout and look of our blog hoping to make it easier to read and a bit more interactive. We apologize beforehand to our blog,  Twitter and Tumblr readers but it appears that our posts may have been re-posted to these sites due to this change. This usually happens because our blog API automatically posts anything we write on our blog to these sites and every time we change our layout we need update our blog posts to include new images, headers and info.

Apparently these services can’t tell the difference between an update and a new post, or I can’t figure out how to keep them from reposting old blog posts. Nevertheless you see our old posts being regurgitated on Tumbler and probably Twitter.

We apologize for this inconvenience but hope that our new layout will make your journey more pleasing and will provide you with a better reading experience.

We are also increasing our post frequency very soon and hope to be able to post at least 3 times a week, providing you with insight into the animation industry, software news and reviews, WIPs and many other interesting information.

We would appreciate receiving any feedback or issues you may have with the new layout so: Tell Us What You Think!

This is our very first short film created circa 2004. We are aware of its shortcomings and weaknesses but we love it like a first child!

We thought we should post it here for everyone to see just for the fun of it.

You can also view the same video on Vimeo:

We wish a prosperous and happy New Year and Nowruz to all our Iranian compatriots.
Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in Iranian calendar. It is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox, which usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed.

Happy Nowruz from Vishka Studio

The UN’s General Assembly in 2010 recognized the International Day of Nowruz, describing it a spring festival of Persian origin which has been celebrated for over 3,000 years.

Haft Sīn (هفت سین) or the seven ‘S’s is a major tradition of Nowruz. The haft sin table includes seven specific items starting with the letter ‘S’ or Sīn (س) in the Persian alphabet. The items symbolically correspond to seven creations and holy immortals protecting them. The Haft Sin has evolved over time, but has kept its symbolism. Traditionally, families attempt to set as beautiful a Haft Sīn table as they can, as it is not only of traditional and spiritual value, but also noticed by visitors during Nowruzi visitations and is a reflection of their good taste.

Haft-Sin

The Haft Sīn items are:

• sabzeh — wheat, barley or lentil sprouts growing in a dish — symbolizing rebirth
• samanu — a sweet pudding made from wheat germ — symbolizing affluence
• senjed — the dried fruit of the oleaster tree — symbolizing love
• sīr — garlic — symbolizing medicine
• sīb — apples — symbolizing beauty and health
• somaq — sumac berries — symbolizing (the color of) sunrise
• serkeh — vinegar — symbolizing age and patience

Other items on the table may include:

• Sonbol — Hyacinth (plant)
• Sekkeh — Coins — representative of wealth
• traditional Iranian pastries such as baghlava, toot, naan-nokhodchi
• Aajeel — dried nuts, berries and raisins
• lit candles (enlightenment and happiness)
• a mirror (symbolizing cleanness and honesty)
• decorated eggs, sometimes one for each member of the family (fertility)
• a bowl of water with goldfish (life within life, and the sign of Pisces which the sun is leaving)
• rosewater, believed to have magical cleansing powers
• the national colours, for a patriotic touch
• a holy book (e.g., the Avesta, Qur’an, Bible, Torah, or Kitáb-i-Aqdas) and/or a poetry book (almost always either the Shahnama or the Divan of Hafez)

This is another architectural pre-visualization we did recently for one of our clients who needed to test out a few construction materials for their project.

building exterior 01

The project was done using 3DS Max 2009, Photoshop and Vray and the compositing was done in Fusion.

Fusion composition layout

You can see some of the layers we used in the table below:

ar_ghabtec_trees_vray_zdepth	ar_ghabtec_trees_vray_renderid	ar_ghabtec_trees_vray_rawshadow
ar_ghabtec_trees_vray_rawreflection	ar_ghabtec_trees_01	ar_ghabtec_int
ar_ghabtec_rawreflection	ar_ghabtec_vray_lighting	ar_ghabtec_ao

Any comments and feedback would be appreciated, thank you for visiting.

This living room was created for one of our clients and an animated TV ad we did for them but we decided to work more extensively on the room and create an architectural pre-viz for our own portfolio also.

living room 01

Most of the models used are from the Evermotion archmodels collections except for a few like the rug and some other bits and pieces. The project was done in 3DS Max 2009, rendered in Vray and the compositing was done in Fusion.

living room 02