An explainer I animated for the team at Foxtel for their new product line - Hubbl - to provide some clarity around the 'Stack N Save' pricing

A brand piece we partnered with the wonderful folk at Patch Creative to create. Jimmy brought the storyboards and script, and Geoff further developed it visually, and then animated it to suit.

The team at Colourhide loved the original ‘fruity’ clip we made with Insight Social Media, so with the release of a new range of ice-cream scented product, they wanted an updated look to suit.

The team at Insight Social Media wanted a social video that would communicate the super-fruitiness of the scented highlighters and notepad range. Juicy!

We partnered up with Tommy from Future Sandwich to create a piece for CarSales Instant Offer, one of the suite of products and services available now from Carsales.

An animated intro we created for the Ouvar Awards. The concept and storyboards were supplied, so we could concentrate on the making for this one.

Bringing some 'Boss' attitude to the Stabilo Boss Original highlighter range for a back-to-school social ad involved some 3D modelling, motion capture and sound design. Oh, and bright colours, lot's of bright colours. Working with Simon from Insight, we wanted to portray that feeling when you turn up to start a brand new term with your crew, and own that place. Like a Boss.

When the playground is made out of, and used exclusively by Stabilo Swing Highlighters. Simon had the idea, we made it happen.

Head Body Legs. An animated execution of a creative collaboration with @scout.makes 😍 @bodhi.makes 🤪 and @dani.toha

Whose Line Is It Anyway - 20 sec Pinball Promo - Foxtel
June 2014

This was a great one to work on... I mean, who doesn't want to design their own pinball machine!? Pinball machine design, modelling and animation by Geoff with an assist from Gerad.

A selection of previous work by Geoff Thomson, January 2020

30 sec graphic promo
March 2017

ProMax BDA GOLD – Most outstanding design in promotion
ProMax BDA GOLD – Best design without footage
ProMax BDA GOLD – Best drama promo
ProMax BDA SILVER – Best use of design
ProMax BDA SILVER – Best promo not using promo footage

We were tasked with coming up with a graphics-driven promo.

I teamed up with my colleague Muthu Browning on this one. We brainstormed the idea, he cut and mixed the audio and I did the visuals. A great example of how good collaboration can be.

I used Photoshop to illustrate, then After Effects to animate.

Lifestyle Channel
February 2019

A fun promo I worked on with the team from Selling Houses Australia.

I was heavily involved in the planning of this shoot as it relied on us being able to pull off the final shot with the main cast of the show standing on the back of a giant hermit crab.

Time was short and I needed help so I roped in my friend and colleague – Ant Hayes – to do the matte painting, 3D trees, flowers, and house model. I bought a 3D model of a hermit crab and renovated it to accommodate a weatherboard house on its back. Once the shoot was in the can I took care of the rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing, and grading. I would have liked a couple of months to do it really well, but it turned out OK given the 2 weeks we had.

Getting the stars of the show to take me seriously when VFX supervising on set on the shoot day was a whole other challenge. Having some pre-vis and some visual reference prepared, put them somewhat more at ease. “We’re standing on what!?”

Also included here is a VFX breakdown of the final shot.

Grammys Teaser
2013

My colleague Leo Nguyen and I collaborated on this one.
The question: How can we use 3D to serve a graphic purpose that looks well finished without the usual 3D gloss taking over.
Leo designed and animated the 2D animated patterns, I did the 3D, then passed renders back to him for finishing.

It’s easy to get caught up simulating fluids when it’d be a lot faster to do it another way. For simple fluid animations like this, I find this to be a better way.
Were I to do it again, I would use pose morphs instead of PLA for better control and easier tweaking.

FEB-X – 60sec Promo
2014

ProMax BDA GOLD – Best Entertainment Promo

Chris Dollman drove this one but we designed and animated it together.
There was a lot of good collaboration, heaps of modelling, animation and compositing. All the best ingredients of a really fun project.

Comedy Channel
July 2018

This brand image spot was a lot of fun to make. Tony, Mikey, Parag and Geoff did a lot of planning and pre-production to map out the performance before it got anywhere near a shoot location. Shooting 3D tracking tests in an empty tennis court was a good start, and that made it clear they needed to do a lot of pre-vis, and that it was going to be entirely driven by the footage edit and sound mix. Once that was close, Geoff roughed out the camera moves for the ‘performance’ of the invisible boxes on a 3D mockup of the location he put together by stitching together a tonne of photos. The DOP then used this 3D mockup as a guide to shoot the final footage in the warehouse, along with the actor’s performance of the conductor. A HDR was captured for lighting. Some tricky 3D tracking from Geoff, animation of a lot of boxes by Geoff & Parag, and a lot of texturing and rendering by Parag brought it all home.

45 sec launch promo
September 2014

Another really fun Comedy Channel promo to work on. I presented the idea of Tosh being a Media Monster made from TVs and bits of old Comedy Channel tech. They loved it so then all there was to do was make it happen.

Motion GT worked with the team at Entropico to produce some 3D visual effects for a music video for this track by Young Franco, Tkay Maidza & Nerve. A challenging job with a tight turn-around.

Geoff created a transition from Young Franco’s control van down a cable and through a 90s-style TV to a young Jada.

Football training stands were designed, 3D modeled, tracked in, and composited into the Marco training shots part 1 and part 2, all of which had moving cameras, making for some tricky tracking.

A few other control-van screen replacements and general VFX work were also done to assist the story.

Cookies are disappearing from the World Wide Web, so for the first time ever, the internet is Hungry. And the Internet is not itself when it’s Hungry.

Motion GT created a server room set extension and glitch effects to help this live-action campaign feel more like it was IN the internet, albeit a slightly dishevelled, hungry one.

The Real Housewives Of Melbourne 60 sec Launch Promo
November 2017

Lisa: “We want to have a giant spaceship, that looks like a giant handbag, and the Melbourne Housewives are going to come out of it looking like a million bucks!”

This was a fun project where I had the proper amount of time to prepare. Our Producer Lisa Frederickson was crafting the promo cut for a while before the shoot so we collaborated a lot on the type of look she and Creative Director Mikki Katz were after.

Mikki: “We can’t use an existing design. It needs to be a new design that looks expensive, and stylish & glamorous and really well designed, not cheap”
That is part of why I love this job – the crazy stuff you get asked to make.

VFX supervisors: Geoff Thomson & Sally-Anne Kerr
3D Camera tracking, modelling, sculpting, texturing, lighting etc: Geoff Thomson
3D dummy spit: Grischa Theisen
Compositing, keying, roto etc: Sally-Anne Kerr, Tristan Brittaine, Grischa Theisen, Geoff Thomson, Anthony Hayes.
Grading: Tristan Brittaine
Concept: Lisa Frederickson
Producer: Lisa Frederickson
DOP: Emilio Abbonizio
Creative Director: Mikki Katz

Behind The Scenes/VFX breakdown

There's also a short Behind the Scenes with some VFX breakdowns.
Behind the Scenes clip shot, edited and produced by Tom Radcliff – Digital Producer

Marketing stunt

To my surprise, my ZBrush model was also sent out to be built into a 20-foot-tall prop for a marketing stunt. The giant handbag would magically turn up over night near Federation Square in Melbourne, to herald the launch of the new season.

A stop-motion style animation to showcase some of the fun products available in the Maped Cosmic range.

A fun AFL take on RoboCop that I worked on with Tim Buhagiar and Ji Lawson from Fox Sports.

‘The guy who owns the Robo Cop suit’ was shot in Melbourne on greenscreen. Robbo was shot in Sydney. The boys sent me the edit for design and compositing.

A quick and dirty job I really enjoyed.
A teaser was needed for the new season of The Walking Dead on Showcase but we weren’t allowed to use any footage or marketing material before launch.
I 3D modeled this baseball bat referencing the weapon used by the bad guy of the show, in record time. Sometimes the less time you have to work on something, the more you are happy with the outcome!

60 sec Teaser and VFX Breakdown
May 2018

A short behind the scenes / VFX breakdown of this beautiful teaser I was lucky enough to work on with Tristan Brittaine, Sally-Anne Kerr & Grischa Theisen.

I was responsible for doing a camera move extension on the opening shot. There was not enough room for the camera to move back that far on set, so I had to extend the shot in 3D. I used Forester software, a 3D scan Tristan put together of a cool log with a hole through it (on set in Tassie) & some ferns and grass models he meticulously built in Cinema 4D.

I also did the 3D tracking for the promo, enabling 3D photo, spider web, and the spider to be put in.

Valentines Day teaser
February 2018

A tease to whet the appetite for the upcoming release of the new series whilst it was still in production.

A fun one I did for Sky News.
I collaborated with Dani Toha on this one, whose design and illustration brought a fun vibe to the project.

Cool As Clint Season - FOX Classics
May 2018

Design and integration of poster art into classic Clint Eastwood films to promote FOX Classics ‘Cool As Clint’ – a yearly week of Clint Eastwood classic films.

I LOVE a western! To then mix 2D and 3D tracking and set adjustment/dead-guy-removal to the mix, well, that puts it right in my sweet spot!

Great promo edit by producer Tony King

30sec graphic teaser
May 2016

We had to develop a teaser for the dramatic new Foxtel series – The Kettering Incident. A 3D moth was obtained from the production company that worked on the show. It required re-doing the hair and setting up the textures in Cinema 4D, but then I could light, animate and render as I needed.

Airport luggage carousel superwide ad

I also had to produce an ad for a superwide screen that sits above the baggage collection carousel at the airport.
Creative Director Mikki Katz and I came up with the idea to make it look like the creepy super-sized moths from the TV series had gotten away in a suitcase. We didn't know if the airport would be weird about it or not. They weren't.
A tracking job mostly, with some quick and basic animation and compositing.

This is a spot I did for the social team to announce the launch of the new X-Files season in Australia. Exciting to be working on another platform.