Hot Knife Blog : Hot Blog

14 October 2008

Chums

Hot Knife have just been involved in producing digital visualisation of Pedigree's new product range for their autumn conference. Working in conjunction with linney design, the project involved the photometric mapping and rendering of both an animation sequence and static packshots.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 17:14 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

01 October 2008

Shortlist

Hot Knife were recently shortlisted for a Digital Media award at the Nottingham Creative Business awards. Although pipped to the post they are proud to be acknowledged as one of the best new media companies in the region and look forward to next years awards !

http://nottinghamcreativebusinessawards.ning.com/

Posted By Simon Wallett At 16:55 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

26 September 2008

Scottish

Compositing, motion graphics and editing were the order of the day for this 4.00 minute Scottish Widows conference programme. The project consisted of multiple layered video, CG and text integration.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 17:14 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

06 September 2008

Snorkles

Work is continuing on the world of 'Sock Monkey'. Here is the development of 'Snorkles' the Scottish bagpipe character. Snorkles suffers from hayfever during the summer months with hooting regularity !

Posted By Simon Wallett At 14:30 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

25 August 2008

Renderfarm update

At Hot Knife we have now added V-ray 1.5 rendering capabilities to our Renderfarm. V-Ray’s ease of use and speed, coupled with its innovative approach to high end features like Global Illumination, Physically accurate Image based lighting and shaders, makes it the best render solution out there on any platform. This compliments the powerfull Mental Ray platform built within 3ds Max.

http://www.hotknife.co.uk/renderfarm/renderfarm.html

Posted By Simon Wallett At 13:54 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

10 August 2008

Swift

Hot Knife produce a 2 minute HD conference/exhibition sequence for the 2008 Sibos event in Vienna.

http://www.swift.com/index.cfm?item_id=58178

Posted By Simon Wallett At 13:54 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

07 July 2008

Bunnies to attention

Hot Knife have just been involved in post production work for the upcoming Warp X film "Bunny and the Bull" directed by Paul King. The work involved producing HD resolution looping sequences, of pre-filmed / photographed model backgrounds, ready for use on a back-projection screen... with less than 24 hours to do it in.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1251725/

Posted By Default Admin At 15:28 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

01 July 2008

Moving

From 1 to 100

Hot Knife are moving. After 10 years we are moving and expanding into new offices in Nottingham city centre. The move will allow us more room to grow all aspects of the business both service & production. Feel free to call in & visit.

Posted By Default Admin At 15:28 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

20 June 2008

Panasonic

Hot Knife have just completed an intro sequence for a new network communication platform for Panasonic. The sequence called for the integration of product and character within an architectural environment in a filmic style influenced by Tron. The whole piece runs at 1min40secs and took approx 4 weeks to produce.

Panasonic animation

Posted By Simon Wallett At 11:34 • Trackbacks (0)

29 May 2008

Get your 3D glasses on.

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Hot Knife have completed 3D anaglyph print images and animation sequences for exhibition and web. The animation was rendered through virtual left and right camera views and composited into the universe and starfield to produce the 3D effect.

Posted By Default Admin At 12:51 • Trackbacks (0)

12 May 2008

Head Wip

More Head Work in progress..

Posted By Default Admin At 17:42 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

18 April 2008

Deep in your bathtub

WIP on Shark vs Duck; a tale of bathtub troubles.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 16:15 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

14 April 2008

Domino's Pizza

Hot Knife have just completed a 30 second spot for Domino's Pizza, the new sponsors of ITV's 'Britain's got Talent'. The brief called for a singing pizza box in a traditional stop-frame animation style. By creating the scene in CG and photomapping the textures onto 3D geometry, we were able to accomodate any changes to the animation that the client requested without the need for a re-shoot. This workflow also allowed for better control over all the elements in the scene.

View the advert here

Posted By Simon Wallett At 14:20 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

04 April 2008

3D Character work in progress

Work in progress of a character head, created in 3ds Max 2009. Further sculpting in Zbrush and rendered in Mental Ray.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 17:00 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

18 March 2008

Life's a pitch

lifes a pitch.jpg

Life’s a pitch

Em-media/DeMontfort University

Hot Knife pitched "The Aeronauts", an animated feature film currently in script development, at the recent 'life's a pitch' event in Leicester. The event was split into two aspects, firstly speed pitching 'our story' to several key producers from the region and secondly seminars by keynote speakers from the major TV channels. The whole day was very enjoyable with some good feedback and contacts made on all sides.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 16:51 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

27 February 2008

Emirates

Hot Knife completed post production work on a 30 second advert for Emirates airlines. The work consisted of a motion control shot of an actress into which was composited reflections of a city upon a CG window, so the actress appeared as if in a skyscraper apartment. Other elements included animating a CG aircraft. The advert also required colour correction, depth of field, lighting and grading.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 10:16 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

20 January 2008

Emirates Routemap

Hot Knife have recently completed post production work and edit on a 30 second advert for Emirates. Filmed around the world, the work involved grading, touch up and manipulation for a number of shots including adding light-leaks, tele-cine effects and re-timing. We worked closely with both Strudel Films and Storm Films to produce the piece.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 15:59 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

12 January 2008

Galaxy

The production of animation of liquid Galaxy text writing on & melting up through a sea of molten chocolate created a recipe for success for the sequences we produced for the Galaxy chocolate website.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 17:47 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

05 January 2008

Coors

Coors required a novel way to show off their yearly stats on market prices. We created 'brands' as players within a football stadium. Each brand had its' sales and statistics in a 'top trumps' style. If only we could get this excited over England's performance !

Posted By Simon Wallett At 15:59 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

18 December 2007

BT Rein

Hot Knife produced a series of animation sequences for BT as part of their BT Broadband configuration/installation material.

Each sequence illustrated, in a user friendly way, every aspect of how broadband is and can be configured both in the household and at the exchange.

This project was part of an ongoing programme for BT that has spanned the past 3 years.

Posted By Simon Wallett At 17:20 • Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)