Depicting our story in a unique concept
We are all about constant learning and sharpening our skills even in our free time—that’s why we organize workshops and create in-house practice sessions that focus on photo compositions, Photoshop wizardry, and the final boss of them all: animation making.
During the latter, pre-selected teams of two are given 1 to 2 weeks to come up with a freestyle creative concept for whatever they’d like to do and bring their work to completion, showing it off to the whole company. The goal in part is of course to dazzle the audience with a never-before-seen visual masterclass but more importantly to hone specific skills that the pairs feel need improving.
In the case of CG Artist duo Dani and Mo, the aim was to step up their game when it comes to using materials and textures in 3D scenes with intricate objects. Not that they were seriously lacking in these departments anyway but these boys are true humble kings.
20 years in a minute
At one point, their animation was black and white to emphasize tactility, then it was about different ZOA-related gadgets found around the office, and later it was a visual overview of the history of our studio. Then finally it became a combination of most of those things except for the lack of color.
The guys’ concept was a futuristic digital museum of sorts that guides the viewer through the almost 20-year history of ZOA, presented through the showcase of gadgets and tools that are either engraved into our memories or essential to our everyday lives. Or both.
Deliberately staying clear of conventional architectural visualization methods, they instead focused on showing close-ups of objects that they either molded from scratch or reworked from pre-existing models. However, what they didn’t know when they started working on the project was that their biggest hurdle wouldn’t be rendering amazing textures but telling a concise and effective story in under just a minute.
We believe that the end result speaks for itself no matter if you’re deeply familiar with us and our work culture or not. For us though, it’s even more special than just being a cool animation as this work is essentially a love letter to the connection we have as colleagues and friends.
Created by
Dániel Oláh
Mohamed Atef