Sleep Number: Sleep Facts
ROLE: Design, Animation, Compositing
CLIENT: Sleep Number
AGENCT: Courageous
Sleep Number came to us with an idea for a series of videos which explain the science behind how we sleep.
They wanted to use 3D graphics to show how our bodies recover, our brains recover, and our muscles heal while we sleep. I was asked to develop a high tech yet clean visual language to illustrate these concepts.
Process and Development
The first challenge our team faced was finding a way to make someone asleep in a bed exciting. Our director came up with the idea to film using a techno crane to create repeatable, highly dynamic camera movements. This allowed us to use masking to reveal different layers of the sheets and bedding. This gave the extremely cool effect of “x-ray vision” to show off the various features of the bed.
By collaborating with the DP and director, I was able to help them frame their shots in a way which allowed plenty of screen space for the graphics to live in. Getting to be on set is always fun and proved to be very valuable to the quality of the final films.
After shooting of each set up was complete with the actors and lighting set ups, we always did a pass with bright lights and a high contrast texture on the bed. This allowed me to generate plenty of tracking data as I took the result back to Cinema 4D.
The work then began to express the benefits of a good night’s sleep in a visual language. We approached the problem by referencing previous client assets. Using that inspiration we developed a high tech yet clean design aesthetic. Rendering every element, from the particles to the light effects, became taxing on our workflow. To solve this we created several different passes and pre-rendered elements where possible. The final result is a polished look into the world of sleep!