Skycar Recent News

A reel of work produced exclusively in 2021! We traveled extensively last year; virtually to South Africa, Argentina and Bali and actually got on planes to shoot in Portland, Maine and Jamaica.

As the Luminar team has said to us, “Watching our proactive safety in action is kinda boring…because it just looks like a car stopping right on time, every time.” But, if you stretch and stop that time to show exactly what is happening within MILLISECONDS, without any human interaction, then it’s a whole different story. We built two distinct 3D worlds to show key auto safety scenarios: one in the suburbs at 25mph and another on a freeway at 65mph. It turns out, there’s a lot of intelligent technology that kicks in “under the hood” of a Luminar enabled vehicle that allows it to avoid unexpected and dangerous driving situations. Through Bhakti Patel’s twilight aesthetic, we also emphasize that, unlike camera based proactive systems (hello, Tesla), Lidar works day and night, rain or shine.

One of the tricks for this project was to build a reliable stereoscopic process that works with a 3D renderer that would provide fast previews and give us the stylized (yet somewhat photoreal) look that we were going for. For this, we chose Redshift but, unlike the standard renderer in Cinema 4D, Redshift does not have a built in stereoscopic setup. So, our animators custom designed a two-camera rig (using Xpresso) that could be hand-animated with total control over the areas of convergence and zero parallax.

For example, here are some process shots from Devin Earthman’s rig.

¡Buenas! We wrapped up our third case study film for Stellar, this time focused on the work of Vibrant. We worked with local crews in Brooklyn, NY and Buenos Aires, Argentina to capture the magic. Jump into the film to learn how the Stellar blockchain and the Vibrant app allow people in Argentina to beat inflation and save more money.

Toy tech is getting pretty slick too! Hasbro asked us to help explain their new Hero ID platform, so we flew their PJ Masks characters around in 3D space to show parents that it’s smarter than meets the eye.

6 months in the making, we are proud to present this comedic film we made for our new client, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The process was big fun from start to finish; many months of writing, 3 shoot days with a stellar cast and crew and then our talented editor digging through endless footage to find the right beats … this 2+ minutes of fun recently landed on the front page of HPE.com. Not only did we get to utilize neglected words like ‘ponderous’ and ‘unwieldy’, as well as provide a faster travel option for restrooms on even floors, but also answer the age-old question: “Where’s Oscar?”

Vectorize made its debut on Illustrator on iPad at #AdobeMAX 2021. How easy is it to turn any image into a vector? Ask Clarice Cho who makes stunning work. We loved working with her and her pup Klaus~! And special thanks to our amazing DP Zach Jopling!

By now you’ve probably seen the Billie Eilish x Adobe campaign. We’ve had a blast partnering with the Adobe studio (i.e. Adobe x Skycar) creating Billie-branded downloadable assets plus a tutorial series. Drawing inspiration from Billie’s style and her “Create What’s True to You” commercial spot, you can learn how to do some of the same movie magic here.

And more tutorials on the way, stay tuned!

Netflix + Adobe – the #TheGreatUntold campaign invited young filmmakers to submit an original trailer for a chance to make their short films with actual Netflix directors and creators.

Challenge

With the pandemic still limiting in-person conferences, Google wanted to build a rich remote experience that brought dimension and a little of the unexpected to their annual Marketing Livestream. With a theme of “Step Into The Ad,” they specifically aimed to reveal a bit more of what’s behind their advertising platform.

One of the last significant unprotected wetland areas in San Francisco Bay is at risk of being lost to development. Developers are seeking to import over 100,000 truckloads of fill to construct 469 “executive houses” atop 500-acres of baylands in the City of Newark called “Newark Area 4” that has long been recommended by Bay scientists and climate experts for protection, restoration and inclusion in the Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Skycar Creative is proud to have produced the video for the campaign and to join with over a dozen conservation and climate organizations in supporting the Save Newark Wetlands campaign in seeking to stop this development — and instead secure the permanent protection, restoration and inclusion of Newark Area 4 in the Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Watch this newly-released 4-minute video featuring prominent Bay scientists and climate adaptation experts, and then take action by signing this new petition calling for the permanent protection of Newark Area 4.

The Adobe Aero team invited us to continue the story from a film we made last year for Illustrator on the iPad. We brought back our hero who is now working with Aero and pushing creative boundaries with augmented reality.

We had a blast shooting this one and getting to play with some beautiful Illustrator assets made by Jhonny Núñez. And If you want to try Aero yourself, we also made a tutorial you can view here.

Check out the future of autonomy in 3D! We helped Luminar Technologies visualize their semi-truck and robo-taxi designs for the announcement of their Blade Vision system. It’s 360 degrees of some crazy-cool lidar tech!

We recently finished a second case study film for Stellar, this time about their work with DSTOQ. In the process, we made some new production friends overseas, working with local crews in Liechtenstein (where DSTOQ is based) and in South Africa. Check out the film to learn how DSTOQ makes investing more accessible and affordable using the Stellar blockchain. Or, just watch for the gorgeous drone shots!

We are excited to share our latest animated piece for Adobe demonstrating the “enhanced e-sign” feature in Acrobat Pro DC. The Adobe team provided this fun script about a dog walking business that was a joy for us to illustrate and animate (big dog lovers here at Skycar). Shoutout to Devin Earthman and the rest of the hardworking team who helped make this new fancy film for proper pups.

While we’ve been working on some fun stuff behind the scenes we thought we’d share some more “Make It Now” projects that we did with Adobe last year. Here’s a favorite for Fresco on how to make a vector drawing from a sketch. Oh, and the dope artwork is by Lidia Lukianova.