2010 President's Club Baltic Cruise
Motion Graphic Design Workflow
While working for ADP National Account Services, I was asked to create a series of videos to promote President’s Club, which is awarded to ADP’s top salespeople each year. Presiden't Club for 2010 included an ocean cruise on the Baltic Sea.
Because the scheduled release date for one of the videos was during the Christmas holiday season, I decided to theme it accordingly with snowflakes and music from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.
For the closing shot of the video, I wanted to show snow falling on the bow of a cruise ship at night. As the snow falls, one of the flakes transforms into the Baltic Cruise logo, which is then followed by the logo text. Using my crude drawing skills, I sketched out a sequence of images that would comprise the closing shot:
While doing research for an earlier President’s Club video, I found a free 3D cruise ship model on the internet. Using Photohop’s 3D tools I was able to create images of the cruise ship from any point of view.
Original 3D Render of the Cruise Ship's Bow
Because I wanted the final shot to show the Baltic cruise logo on the ship’s bow, I decided to use a zoomed-in view of the cruise ship. Since I wanted this to be a nighttime scene, there was a lot of work I needed to do to transform this image.
Using a variety of tools in Photoshop, I created my nighttime shot as follows:
First, I created the wood flooring for the ship’s deck. I did this by creating a single wood plank, duplicating it a few times, and then selecting them all to create a pattern I could paint onto the bow using the Pattern tool.
Next, Using lighting effects, I changed the color of the ship to a dark hue to simulate nighttime.
Then, I filled each ship portal with a yellow gradient to create the illusion of light coming from inside the ship.
Finally, to light the deck of the bow, I used Photoshop's Lighting Effects filter. I positioned two lights so they appear to be coming from underneath each side of the upper deck. I angled the lights so they intersect each other in the middle of the bow.
Final 2D Composite of the Cruise Ship's Bow
I then created a 2D composite of the ship and inserted it into Adobe After Effects where I used a particle generator to create the falling snow.
Below is the image sequence for the final shot. Each image in the sequence matches the sequence in my storyboard.
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Here is the closing shot as it appears in the video: