Tunnel vision: Dasani goes underground for a first-of-its-kind animation. (modeling/animation).

Phactory Productions of New York made quite a splash with its recent 20-second "animated" advertisement for the Coca-Cola Company's Dasani water product, which features saturated color images of cascading water splashing inside an invisible glass. Not a typical animation, the innovative spot overflows with creative firsts, including the use of a new medium.

The ad, shown within the darkened tunnels of Atlanta's subway system, marks the first time that in-tunnel advertising has been used in the US. This new medium extends transit advertising from subway platforms into the passageways between subway stations to reach a captive audience of riders. The production is also the first to use Arete Entertainment's Advanced Fluid Simulator software and Submedia's innovative light-box display system. The 1000-foot-long display, which is mounted onto the tunnel walls, features a series of still images that are stationary yet, like a flip book, appear to move--in this instance, at some 240 frames per second as the subway car passes by at about 40 miles per hour.

"Although the technology is advanced, it's based on very primitive animation principles," explains Scott Sindorf, who along with Damijan Saccio, founded Phactory Productions. Submedia's technology is actually an evolution of the zoetrope, a nineteenth-century cylindrical device with slits that when spun made images inside the cylinder appear to move.

Using Submedia's technology requires far more and far larger images than were used in the zoetrope. In fact, the image requirements are more demanding than what is typically needed for a broadcast or film application. To achieve the 20 seconds of Dasani animation required 4800 still images, compared to 600 for an animated broadcast, to accommodate the speed of a subway train. "Passengers are seeing the succession of images at a much higher frame rate than they normally would [in a film or broadcast application]," explains Sindorf. Having worked with Submedia on test projects in the past, the artists determined that the images-approximately 31 inches high and 2.5 inches wide--would have to be output at 400 dpi for a crisp, clean look.

Water Generator

The team used Softimage3D running on Boxx Technologies' NT workstations to create the high-resolution 3D images, environments, text, and camera moves. Rendering was performed on the Boxx workstations running Mental Images' mental ray in Softimage. Also, the artists used Softimage's fluid generator to create the water used in the previsualization. But for the final animation, the team wanted the ...