Client: Parle Agro Creative Agency: &Walsh Creative Director: Jessica Walsh Art Director: Lucas Luz Director: Drew Kirsch Production Company: Tomorrow Post-Production: DI Post Executive Producers: John Poliquin, Colin Minihan Producer: Meika Wagner Editors: Ben Winter, Ben Knechtel Colorist: fortyork.tv Post Audio: Timeline Audio VFX Supervisor: Karl Hein Concept Artists: Nick Stechyson, Kate Raymond Character Animation: Wade Cross, Andrew Embury Modelling: Alex Sheludchenko Rigging: Chris LeSage AR Plugin/Connection Toolkit: Brielle Garcia Compositing: Karl Hein
Agency: DI Post Producers: Colin Minihan, Meika Wagner Director: John Poliquin Editor: Ben Knechtel Compositors: Karl Hein, Tony Copolillo Animator: Kyle Richtsfeld
Writer: Mark Polish Director: Mark Polish Producers: Daniel Davila, Janet DuBois, Mark Polish, Karl Hein Starring: Logan Polish, Colin Ford, Cyrus Arnold, Johnny Jay Lee, Megan Lee, Brandon Wilson, D.W. Moffett Awards: Best Director, Best Feature Film, Best Ensemble in a Feature Film
Client: Bath & Body Works Agency: Spacejunk Producers: Christa Cox, Melina Fuentes Creative Director: Mike Beaumont Director: Miranda Dumm DP: Jason Hambach Editor/Colorist: Kurt Keaner VFX/Compositing: Karl Hein Animation: Nick Couts
Client: Baskin-Robbins Agency: 22Squared Post: DI Post Director: John Poloquin Producers: Colin Minihan, Meika Wagner Editors: Ben Winter, Ben Knechtel VFX/Compositing: Karl Hein
Client: Instagram Post: DI Post Director: John Poliquin Producer: Colin Minihan Director of Photography: Santiago Cantillo Editors: Ben Winter | Brandon Bernier 3D Animation: Tony Copolillo | Karl Hein Compositing: Tony Copolillo | Karl Hein
Working with director Nick Peterson and Green Glow Films, I helped with the majority of VFX for this music video for McKenna Michels. A tale of deception, betrayal, and witchcraft, it was vital for the set pieces to look and feel like something out of the 18th century. My work mainly consisted of removing any evidence of modernity, including cameras, lights, cables, tanks, ropes, and various other production-related items that topped up in frames. Another big sequence I worked on was simulating the blood splatter and pool. Since the production was shooting in an actual historic location, spraying blood all over the walls and dumping it on the antique floors was definitely out of the question.
VFX BREAKDOWN
CREDITS
Starring: McKenna Michels Directed by: Nick Peterson Production Company: Green Glow Films Executive Producers: John Dismukes, Stephen Wayne Mallett Producer: Hans Boysen Cinematographer/Colorist: Garrett O Brien VFX: Karl Hein, Tony Copolillo
After launching a successful campaign for Smoodh with Varun Dhawan as their spokesperson, Parle Agro wanted to update the spot with a more realistic looking (while still stylized) room for the Coffee Frappe scene that fit better with the other two rooms.
Because the two practical sets used a combination of recognizable food items (chocolate bars and caramel squares) combined with one or two more “fantastical” elements (the Seussian trees), I opted to keep with this theme for the new environment, choosing to showcase coffee beans as well as more fantastical, café-inspired elements.
For more dynamics in the space, I created two fluid simulations (the "lazy river" with floating beans and the coffee pour) to relate back to the one in the Chocolate Milk room. The lazy river was created using a few different mesh deformations as well as some dynamics "fakery" on the floating coffee beans. The coffee pour was created with a combination of a more traditional fluid simulation as well as a very art-directable ripple effect in Houdini.
PREVIOUS ROOM
SYLEFRAMES
FLUID SIM SETUP
CREDITS
Client: Parle Agro | Smoodh Agency: &Walsh Post: DI Post Director: John Poliquin Producer: Colin Minihan 3D Animation: Tony Copolillo | Karl Hein Compositing: Tony Copolillo | Karl Hein
A fast-paced journey through the experience of enjoying a crisp, refreshing Appy Fizz. Working alongside agency partners &Walsh as well as DI Post, this video was meant to showcase the brand's partnership with Priyanka Chopra.
In total, we concepted seven different rooms that would stitch together into one seamless camera move. My role was to the creation and compositing of three of the rooms, as well as creating the fluid simulations used throughout.
STYLEFRAMES
ROOM TRANSITION R&D
FLUID SIMULATION R&D
CREDITS
Client: Parle Agro Agency: &Walsh Post: DI Post Director: John Poliquin Producer: Colin Minihan 3D Animation: Tony Copolillo | Karl Hein Compositing: Tony Copolillo | Karl Hein
Vandyl, a new e-sports venture, is looking "to disrupt what it means to be a gamer, artist, creator, and human by facilitating the best talent in gaming, while producing groundbreaking original content." With a new Halo Championship Series team signed, they approached me to help them craft an announcement trailer that would set the tone for the rest of the season and help bring Vandyl's brand language into 3D animation.
Working with their designer, we developed a story revolving around "The Vandyl," a wandering cloaked being, with no defined figure or identity, moving through a world scattered with the remains of historic battles. Working first in Cinema4D for the initial character design, then moving over to Marvelous Designer for the cloth simulations, The Vandyl was designed to be a powerful but fluid silhouette, with his cloak obscuring any defining features except for the orange glow emanating from his boots.
The rest of the video was created in Unreal Engine 5 to make use of their Nanite system for handling complex geometry as well as their Lumen system for handling global illumination.
CREDITS
Founder/CEO: Justin Havey Art Director: Audrey Stemen 3D Animator: Karl Hein Editor: Xavier McAllister
Published by karlhein00@gmail.com inAnimation, VFX
Brave Wilderness—a YouTube channel headed by Coyote Peterson—was making the jump from online to broadcast with their new show Brave the Wild on Animal Planet. I worked to define the show’s graphic aesthetic, and from there, oversee the production all of the assets needed for their first season.
We began with exploring the logo/title treatment, as this would inform the look and feel of the rest of the graphics that followed. NOTE: About halfway through the design process, the show's title was changed from Beyond Brave to Coyote Peterson: Brave the Wild.
Final Logo/Title Design
From there, the team began building out the other assets needed for the show, including a fully customizable, realistic Earth that worked natively in After Effects. The template makes use of the VC Orb plugin as well as 8K texture maps. It also gave the Brave Wilderness team the ability to search for locations by name, and have the show's location marker auto-snap to that location in 3D space, making the setup and rendering of these maps (over 15 in total) simple and easy.
3D Earth After Effects Template
Another huge undertaking for this project was the illustrated animal fact portion of the show, known as infopods. Our idea was to present these like Coyote himself takes notes in the field—through a journal. For these sections, we made over 50 custom illustrations of interesting animal facts and brought them to life through subtle camera moves and animation.
Proposed Infopod Style
Final Infopod Style
Credits
Client: Wilderness Productions | Animal Planet Director: Karl Hein Producer: Kate Wilke Designers: Karl Hein, Jonny Sidlo, Audrey Stemen Illustrator: Christine Lee Animator: Karl Hein Editor: Kurt Keaner
Wolf's Ridge Brewing wanted to start producing more social content to promote not just their beers, but some of the stories behind the beers. From this, I developed the WRB Storytellers Series, with each video showcasing a member of the staff talking in-depth and improvisationally about their favorite aspects of the restaurant or brewery.
The biggest challenge for this series was the budget. With only a limited amount of hours we could spend, we had to develop a system for these videos that could be executed quickly and efficiently. We landed on a very crude, cutout stop-motion style—heavily influenced by shows like Tom Goes to the Mayor. We quickly became well-acquainted with Photoshop's "Select Subject" tool, and created an FX preset for After Effects that handled all of the character styling.
Director: Karl Hein Producer: Mike Gillespie Designer: Audrey Stemen Animators: Karl Hein, Audrey Stemen Audio Engineer: Kody Orris Photographer: Justin Havey
