Land Rover Commercial!

In the spring of 2010, John Vegher at Moddler.com contacted me, mentioned something about a bit of commercial work to do some digital modeling work for a major car manufacturer, and would I be interested?

Well, hell yes, I was interested!

I was supplied with a tsunami of files, with the task of distilling the electronic data to create a real car, and compact/streamline it down to make a functional 3d-printer file about 10 inches long. Sounds easy, right? Just hit "Scale" and you're done. Well...not so fast.

A couple days into it, I realized that I had underestimated what it was going to take to get this done. The task quickly took on gargantuan proportions, and I had budgeted only a week of time off from my job to get it done. The work slowly took shape, but not fast enough on my part, despite 15- and 16-hour days in a designing chair. No sleep. More caffeine. Clock's Ticking. Slap yourself, take a shower, and get back in the chair. It was glorious, the pressure and deadlines, but I had to choke down some humble pie, and tell John that I wasn't going to make the deadline.

Thank God for Mark Mondragon, who was able to pull my fat out of the fire, and turn the crude digital chunks I handed him into a workable model. John printed the work out, and sent it off to the advertising agency that commissioned the piece. Here's Mark's entry on the great work he did.

The advertising agency created a beautiful stop-action piece of animation for the Land Rover Freelander LR2, the video of which I've embedded from YouTube. If you see some of the associated clips, you'll see the "Making Of" in there somewhere, where the completed model is shown in a few flashes. I'm proud to have been a small part of this glorious work.

My thanks again to John and Mark for letting me get in on this adventure. Will it lead to bigger work? Who knows. I'm humbled to know I was part of such a high-profile project, though.

Best,
John Bear Ross