MeowWolf "Change Your Frequency" - Houston Launch Film :60

Stills

Early Motion explorations And DEV

As part of planning for the shoot, I jumped into testing and experimenting while the design team and creative direction team worked on shaping the vision. I love this phase of the project because it gives me the chance to test ideas and use any tool I can get my hands on to deliver the best creative output and flexibility. Some of these tests evolved into mini tools that became essential throughout the spot, guiding and refining our approach. It was an exciting process that also included previz for camera angles and brainstorming innovative, fun ways to bring a stationary car to life. A lot went into this, but here are just a few highlights to wet your appetite.

I was hopping between C4d, AE, Blender, Houdini, Nuke and little tools in each software package. It was a bit of a guerilla style approach.

BTS ON SET - A green car on a greenscreen set!

Due to a last-minute change, we ended up using the green car. Fortunately, most of our shots were lock-offs, so a bit of roto work and despill handled it nicely. Ensuring interactive lighting on set was crucial, as we wanted to treat the live-action footage separately from any post-production work while still maintaining natural movement and dynamic lighting interplay.

Process - CG Cars/Swangas/Other Elements

We created a 3D “stunt double” car to enhance key moments in the spot. This involved either augmenting the car plate with additional elements or using a fully CG car for specific shots. To add movement to static car shots, we generated a depth map in Nuke, allowing us to subtly displace the car and create a sense of dimension. This technique worked beautifully in combination with in-camera light play and other animated elements in each scene. The After Effects animators truly brought everything together.

Below, you’ll find raw 3D renders with light compositing provided for the AE artists to integrate into their scenes. If you’ve ever worked with me, you know I’m passionate about building setups and systems. I often share quick videos to demonstrate how to use these tools or explore how they might be helpful to the team.

Day to Night Radio Tower Endtag

The original design of the day-and-night Houston Radio Tower was created by the talented Victoria Kociman. I had the opportunity to build on her work by refining the textures, enhancing the lighting, finessing the animation, and compositing the shot in Nuke. Our amazing animation lead, Ric Hernandez, took my Nuke comp, seamlessly stitched the day and night transitions, and truly brought the vision to life. It was such a fantastic collaboration!

Appendix

Using ComfyUI, I experimented with style transfers on the Houston skyline. Many of these were inspired by our own team’s work, but in the end, we didn’t need to rely on AI. Our team of incredible artists came up with far more creative and innovative ideas.

That said, I wanted to share some of these experiments because there’s definitely some beautiful and interesting work here. For me, AI serves as a great ideation tool—an enhancement to the creative process rather than a replacement.

Credits