The Brief
Inition was approached by creative design agency ATYP to provide a 3D scan and 3D print of musician Si Begg’s head for the launch of his new album on Addictech Records. The resulting work was turned into album artwork and an experimental stop motion video entitled, ‘Permission to Explode’, to coincide with the launch.
Our Solution
Because of the high levels of detail that have to be captured in order to accurately reconstruct facial expressions and textures such as hair, 3D scanning faces can be a complex business.
In order to produce the high quality print that ATYP required for the video, Inition’s 3D scanning team selected the Mephisto 3D Scanner for Si Begg’s head. This scanner is capable of capturing high detail incredibly quickly and enabled our team to scan Si’s head from all angles in less than half a day.
Once we had completed the scan and cleaned the data in post-processing, it was sent back to ATYP, allowing them to manipulate the file to fit their creative brief. When Inition received the newly edited version, Si’s head was no longer a solid 3D mesh but had been sliced into 17 equally-sized sections.
Inition decided to 3D print two heads, one solid and one sliced up. Our ZPrinter 450 took just one day to print out both heads in-house at our Shoreditch studios.
The Results
ATYP created a 30 second stop-motion animation using coloured rods which moved around a grid in waveforms, with the seventeen 3D slices of Si’s head coming together to form segments.
This animation was then united with work in other media including projection, scripting, live action and CGI to create a final piece which embraces the concept of hyper-creativity that inspired Si Begg’s album.
The short film was published online and emailed out to Si Begg’s fans to promote the new album.
Merlin Nation, co-founder of ATYP stated: “The 3D scanning and printing work we did with Inition was a crucial element in the success of this project. Their expertise, professionalism and willingness to help us experiment ensured that we got the results we needed.”
Read about ATYP’s case study on the project here.
To view more about the making of the film watch this video: