Pops of Color for Samsung’s Galaxy A Series Clim Studio used Maxon One to create joyful CG screensavers for Samsung’s popular line of smartphones.
Clim Studio makes it a mission to inject energy and color into their motion design, and their recent project for Samsung demonstrates the global appeal of the studio’s playful style.
This collaboration with Cheil International was Clim Studio’s first CG screensaver project. With an extremely tight deadline, Cinema 4D, Redshift and X-Particles were instrumental in allowing the team to deliver in record time.
Maxon last spoke with founder and Creative Director Climent Canal (better known as Clim) about an Amazon Alexa project. Since then, the busy studio has grown and welcomed to the team Executive Producer Jack Alexandre and CG Generalist Witold Markiewicz.
Amid this activity, Cheil invited the studio to pitch for the Samsung project to create a series of dynamic screensavers. “They came to us directly,” explains Clim. “It was our first time creating this type of work, but the guys at Cheil were very understanding and explained all the possible constraints we could meet along the way.”
The image on the right shows Samsungs original static wallpaper concept that provided the visual reference for Clim Studio's screensavers.
Reimagining a Concept
Having won the project, Clim created a team tailored to meet the requirements of the creative direction, production, 2D animation, CG design and animation, X-Particles and rendering. A truly international effort, including 12 people working remotely from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, the U.S. and U.K., plus clients in South Korea.
The brief was to recreate an existing wallpaper concept, designed by Samsung, as a dynamic 30-second animation and an additional set of screensaver scenes inspired by that initial design. “This meant that all the elements of their visual language were already there: color palette, soft bodies and particles,” explains Clim. “The ask was to amplify their existing visual language. They were looking for fun, arty, playful visuals.”
Initially planned as a six-week project, Clim’s team was asked to deliver in half that time when the product launch date was moved forward. “We had to adapt and rethink the whole production plan in order to meet their new deadline.” Thanks to Cheil’s confidence and Clim’s tightly knit team, the work was created and delivered with minimal rounds of feedback and notes.
Unpacking the workflow
Clim notes that in recreating Samsung’s wallpaper design, the challenge was to replicate the pre-approved visuals. “It was a bit tough because all elements needed to be near identical to the original concept art.”
With such a tight timeline, the decision was made to jump straight into Cinema 4D to get the scenes correct from the start. Still images with motion references then helped explain the action to the client. Once approved, the team moved into animation.
“Designer and Animator Marcus Bakke did an amazing job using C4D’s soft body dynamics to simulate mass and collision effects while designers Vasiliy Filileev and Mikael Sedov focused on X-Particles to control the motion within the ‘river’ of large and small orbs,” Clim recalls. The result is a series of soft and hard spheres of various colors and textures, playfully flowing, bouncing, cascading and colliding around the screen.
Clim was thrilled to have his studio’s work displayed on millions of mobile phones and in retail stores worldwide. “It’s been a game changer for us,” he says, adding that it has already resulted in another collaboration with Cheil and Samsung.
What’s next for Clim Studio? “Samsung brought us into the watch of bigger brands,” Clim explains. “We are able to deliver bigger productions and we are already collaborating with a well-known mobile network in the U.S. I can’t say more about that, but we are also about to launch an exquisite concept film for a new luxury brand, which we’re very excited about.”
In the meantime, Clim and the Samsung project team are enjoying a new kind of experience. “We are receiving some shots from our followers when they spot our work in retail stores. It’s something we are not used to, and it makes us very happy.”
Credits
Creative Director - Clim
Executive Producer - Jack Alexandre
CG Designer, Animator Generalist - Marcus Bakke
CG Designer, Generalist - Josefina Llano
CG Designer, Generalist - Liam Henderson
CG Animator, X-Particles Expert - Mikhail Sedov
CG Animator, X-Particles Expert - Vasiliy Filileev
CG Animator - Federico Picci
CG Animator - Everthon Machado
2D Animator - Ana Freitas
CG Animator - Edgar Ferrer
CG Animator - Joseph Winston