awards.

• Vimeo Staff Pick
• Featured on Creativepool
• Official selection at Festival Motion Design, Nevers, France.
• Official selection at A/perture Cinema, On and on, St. Winston Salem, NC, USA.

It started as a small project, just to try a set up in After Effects.
But it grew and probably outgrown out of my best expectations.

Great things came thanks to this project!

Here are my Gastaloops, a 100 daily project, one looping animated gif every day.

concept.

Browsing on internet I found a few people that are keeping themselves busy with personal projects on a daily basis. Every day they’re able to post something online.

Looking at them I always thought I couldn’t make it: too busy with my daily job in the studio, too busy at home with my family.
But I tried.

I just had to work against the clock

limits.

In order to fuel the creativity, I wanted to limit myself. Limits always work great with my mindset: playing between boundaries makes me feel more comfortable and relaxes me.

I started setting the palette. Just three colours. I picked a red, an off white and a black. But in order to choose the actual colours I took codes easy to remember, day after day.

So the white is R255 B255 G230, the red is R255 B100 G100 and the black is black, simply enough.

Every gif had to be optimised for Dribbble, so the resolution had to be 800×600.

In order to keep the size down, I chose to use just 50 frames and to have it looping.

freedom.

Having set all these technical limits, I also wanted to be free to create whatever I wanted. Ultimately, I know I had to create one gif everyday in about 1 hour, so I wanted to set up one last rule that would have allowed me not to be stuck, by any means, failing my project.

The last rule is not to have any rule about the tools used or the style created.

Every gif could be done in a 3d program, in After Effects, Photoshop, hand drawn, shot, Houdini, Real Flow, particles or fluid simulations, whatever.

A tool is just a tool and it shouldn’t matter what you use when you create something.

Also, sometimes is even more interesting creating an animation stepping out from our comfort zone. And this is what I did in a lot of the gifs.

achievements.

Creating these gifs it’s been an amazing journey. I can remember clearly where I was and what I did that day of my life just looking at every one of those.

Every day I was posting them online on few social networks: dribbble, imgur, facebook and twitter.

After few weeks, the Gastaloops started to get more and more attention.
In total, now, the Gastaloops have been viewed more than a million times just on imgur. And I managed to get interviews and features on some amazing magazines and websites.

Here is a list:

Feature on Fubiz

Interview on Timeout + Block Shot page on Dribbble

Interview on GIF Magazine

Feature on CreativeBoom

Feature on We and the color

Editor’s pick on Mu.zli (17/02/2017)

Feature on Freepik

Feature on InspirationGrid

Interview on Gif Porn with 150K views.

Featured artist on Giphy

Interview and exclusive feature on Wired Italia

Published on Repubblica, one of the major newspapers in Italy!

music promo.

After 100 Gastaloops, I put them together creating a music promo for the song Out, by IISO. We have been featured on Wired.

awards.

Proudly, Vimeo Staff Pick (20th Feb 2017)!

Winner of FILE GIF 2017: Multiplicity, São Paulo, Brazil.

Winner of Creativepool Annual 2017, Animation / Individual category.

Third place at The Gifers festival in Turin, November 2016.

Part of a documentary about GIFs, created by Konstrastfilm for German / French channel Arte. You can watch it online!

Have been exhibited at the International GIF Festival “Y a des GIFs qui se perdent!” in Saint-Etienne (France), on October 2016.

film festivals.

• Official selection Supertoon, Šibenik, Croatia.
• Official selection POP SEFF,  Szczecin European Film Festival, Poland.
• Official selection Caostica 15, Bilbao, Spain.
• Official selection Art all Night, Trenton, NJ, USA.
• Official selection 60 seconds or less Video Festival.
• Official selection FILE São Paulo 2017: Bubbling Universes, Brazil.

Well, if you managed to look at all of these, good fortune will come to you! YOU’RE AMAZING!

overview.

The Studio were please to have worked with RSA director Brett Foraker on his recent commercial for the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV ‘The numbers never looked this good’ for ad agency ‘Golley Slater Cardiff’.

The 2016 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV campaign was inspired by the creative approach for the original launch in 2014. The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV was the world’s first 4WD Plug-in Hybrid SUV. It produced a remarkable 148mpg, becoming the UK’s number one selling hybrid vehicle.

Not only does the new 2016 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV have even more impressive numbers at its heart, it has also undergone a complete redesign with stunning exterior styling and a premium interior finish.

The new ad, directed by ex-Channel 4 creative director Brett Foraker, turns numeracy into artistry. Each scene features a palette of numbers subtlety woven into the landscape, ensuring that every repeat viewing reveals a previously unspotted detail. Like the new 2016 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, the campaign is a mix of hard numbers and wonderfully soft touches.

When the Studio@Smoke&Mirrors were first approached and shown the initial storyboards the team were really excited about the possibilities and worked out various post route options that could be used to achieve numbers within the environment.

After a series of R&D tests and further pre-production with Foraker and the Agency, a final route was agreed. Further style frames were then created prior to the shoot as well as full CG pre-visualisation of the car, rigs and studio environment to work out as much pre-camera data before the shoot days.

shooting.

On set shoot supervision was provided by the Studio using a combination of 2D and 3D artists alongside the Studio’s creative director. The usual reference and data was collected on set and processed back to the studio so the artists could commence work immediately.

Laser cut number tarmac had to be produced for the set which the CG team provided exact data for. Proxy tree trunks were built out of ply on a huge rig to mimic light play on the car as well as a rigs for the tunnel, again to provide natural light play on the body of the car. This provided indispensable lighting reference for the CG team to replicate later in post.

On set editing was a prerequisite due to the tight schedule, this allowed agency and the director insight into the potential shots and edits allowing the CG team to start prepping scenes almost immediately.

creating 3d.

Challenges for the CG and comp department’s were to create this world from numbers that almost looked believable but where the viewer would instantly see the numerical messages formed within it.

This would inspire the viewer to look for more whilst enjoying the journey through this surreal magical numerical landscape, importantly taking in the beauty of the new model ‘Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV as it passes through each scene.

I personally created the previz, workign the exact moves of the rig, with its constraints. I also worked on two of the shots (shot 1 and 4), while managing the whole team.

We extensively used Cinema 4D and Vray with its hair module to create the grass and the wheat. This proved to be the perfect choice: with full GI, flicker free, every frame was rendering in about 45-55 minutes, compared to the over 2 hours with the standard engine.

Starting from June 2017, Out Of The Loop is another 100 gifs in 100 days project, in collaboration with Nicola Destefanis.

themes.

Every single gif is filled with some 80’s nostalgia, colorful childhood memories which borders fade between movies, videogames, toys, tv commercials and tv series, tactile sensations or just distant echoes of a (not so) distant past.
But exactly as our brain works, we quickly found out that what remains in our brains, what struck our imagination is something unique and peculiar, not directly connected with what actually happened, what we actually experienced.

the quiz.

I quickly realised that some of the gifs I was doing could become a funny movies quiz. Well, it’s now here! You can play the 30 Movies Gifs Quiz! Have fun!

rules.

We chose to set some strict rules to guide us in the creative process too. The gifs had to have some qualities:

1. gradient
2. looping
3. 60fps
4. 2 seconds long, 120bpm
5. popping out from the borders

music video.

In 2017 I bumped in Phantom by a great artist named Jason Gaffner. I thought his song could have been perfect for my showreel, so I sent him an email asking if I could use it. He was so kind to grant me the usage of the song. We started our collaboration with just a random email and now the whole Out of the Loop series is the official music video of his song Feel Something.

instagram.

A new addition to the project is that we share every day the loop on instagram, so you can enjoy the animations in their full resolution and also with a bespoke soundtrack everyday!

features.

Featured on Behance / Motion.
Featured on Ello.
Featured on Creativepool.

On We and the Color
On Singular Graphic Design (spanish)

At Athens Digital Arts Festival.
At VID & SOUND BIME PRO.

why.

I’ve been asked few times why I wanted to do another 100 days project. Or actually why I even did the gastaloops in the first place.
I believe that the process of doing one animation every day for 100 days will make me and us better, it will improve my design skills, it will tests me scheduling my days, it will force me to solve problems and being effective with my technical choices.

For years I’ve started and deleted my drawings, songs, animations, writings. And always the reason was that they weren’t good enough.
But with a 100 days project like this or my previous one, maybe each animation is not brilliant or perfect. But overall, after 100 days, it will be at least interesting.

We are not aiming to subvert the design world or to create something unique. We genuinely want to improve through a daily effort and progress.

Hope you’re going to follow us in our colorful journey!

the future is female.

Here Cindy Gallop shares with us her insights on the future of the advertising industry and the reality of the new world order.

There is no future that happens without deliberate human intervention. The future of work is the future that you, I and all the rest of us make happen. This means it’s important to state that my vision for the future of work is not an objective observational “I think this is what it will be like”.

the future is entrepreneurial.

Hyper connect digital networks will completely change our work eco-systems and bolster the ‘Anywhere Economy’.

Dr James Bellini is a respected TV broadcaster, futures analyst, writer and speaker. He predicts augmented and virtual realities are going to radically change life in the next 20 years.

But are the changes all positive, and what does this mean for the world of work?

the future is direct.

We are at the precipice of a digital revolution that will change every aspect of our lives, with a global computer fabric changing the way we interact, work and live.

Meet our expert, Peter Smith. Peter is the CEO and co-founder of Blockchain, a financial technology and data company. He is also a regular contributor and speaker on new pioneering technology in the fin-tech space.

the future is predictive.

Tracey is an award-winning futurist and works with clients such as Google and Diageo. She speaks and writes regularly on the future of artificial intelligence (AI), gender, work and culture.

In a world in which everything can be tracked, monitored, analysed and scrutinised it may be incumbent on public services – and private enterprises – to invest in the crime prediction game. It may be that the only way to fight crime, so much of which will be automated by then – will be to forecast it, and an industry will spring up that is about tracking behaviours, pattern recognition and anomaly spotting that suggests crime before it has occurred – cybercrime ‘pre-crime’.

the future is ours.

Ben Hammersley is a British internet technologist, journalist, author, broadcaster and futurist. He is a frequent contributor to many publications including Wired Magazine and BBC.

Quite simply, you cannot prepare for 20 years’ time. You can only prepare for tomorrow – by constantly and actively questioning everything you do today. So that’s what you have to do: maintain a mental, physical, and legal nimbleness that allows – or even forces – you to be reassessing and course correcting, on a day to day basis. Those 20 years will pass, and you will be well placed. But you’ll also be well placed for the 20 years after that as well.

Credits.

• Client: Virgin
• Production: Jam Films
• Direction, animation, sound design: Gasta