So write your requests down as a Facebook comment, SHARE the work, and if it gets enough LIKES then we deem you worthy to be let in on our dark secrets…..

The multiple assets in this Urban Angel series can run across print, from magazine to billboard, interactive and digital.
Cinemagraphs are rising in popularity as a way of adding elements of repeated motion to a ‘photograph’, allowing the viewer to become immersed in a moment in time, whilst maintaining manageable file sizes necessitated by many digital advertising platforms. This method can bring subtle life to imagery and be a cornerstone of truly integrated marketing.

Coming from a photography and print foundation, for 13 years we have continued to work with established photographers from around the world, and value our relationships with these people for ongoing show-stopping work in the print and digital advertising world. A recent piece we worked on with acclaimed photographer Andy Glass, is presented within the Photography Annual – one of four images which we produced for global energy corporation Statoil’s latest campaign. Read all about the Behind the Scenes on this CGI-photography integrated project here.

Among the images honoured for this year’s Best in Book was a stunning shot from Tim Flach’s More Than Human series (an image of a hairless chimp which adorns the front cover of the CR November issue shown below), Nadav Kander (whose shot of actor Mark Rylance is on the Photography Annual cover), Martin Usborne, Peter Lippmann, Giles Revell and more.

The launch was held at our Shoreditch neighbours, theprintspace gallery, where the exhibition continues throughout November. As supporters of the advertising category, TJ are pleased to be associated with top photographers, those we have collaborated with on recent global campaigns, and many we would be delighted to work with in the future. The images are also featured in the Creative Review November issue, sold in all good newsagents.

See  our pics from the launch party on our Facebook page here!

The Royal British Legion has launched the 2012 Poppy Appeal with an innovative outdoor campaign to raise awareness for Remembrance Day on November 11th. The billboard and poster images, featuring everyday scenes from our working lives such as the tube and suits, are featured in tube and railway stations around the capital, with the tagline ‘Something Missing?’.

The Royal British Legion is the UK’s leading Armed Forces charity, providing emotional and financial support to former and current members of the armed forces and their families. One of the main events that they run is the Poppy Appeal, the poppy being the symbol of Remembrance Sunday, representing those who have lost their lives in honour of their country. In the running up to Remembrance Sunday, lapel poppies are adorned by many of the public, with the image of the poppy strongly linked with the charity itself.

Each image features a cut out of a poppy revealing several different backdrops behind the poster, such as the cables along the underground. Working with agency CST The Gate, we created the three ads to remind people to pick up their poppies for the good cause. Our in-house photographer shot the material needed around London, and the rest was created in CGI and brought together seamlessly in post.

Upload your snap to Facebook if you spot the campaign on your travels around the capital, and tag TaylorJamesLtd.

We were approached by LBi to produce this huge composition for Sony, to form part of an interactive website for the launch of their new ‘Xperia Ion’. A team from our London and NYC studios went over to do the shoot alonside the filming of the TV commercial at Fox Studios in LA.

The brief was to produce a huge street scenes and populate it with hints from popular movies, music and video games. These hints form part of an interactive hide and seek game for users of the Sony website. This was a complete Taylor James production, combining photography both shot on-location and in our studio, with CGI and model-making. Complex creative retouch was necessary to build this multi-part comp to the scale and flexibility required to zoom into the image at high levels of detail.

With just 3 weeks from kick-off to delivery, we pulled out all the stops to launch in time for the release of ‘The Amazing Spider Man’ movie in cinemas!

For Behind the Scenes footage, out-takes and the large interactive image, see here. And see our Facebook page for even more pictures on-set!

Check out our Facebook page and LIKE us along with more than 3,000 other fans!

Terms and Conditions here

Computer generated imagery and photography are at a juxtaposition. While photographers clean up their images, making them look more like renderings, 3D artists are adding blemishes, dirt, scratches and developing tools like subsurface scattering to make their renderings look more like snapshots. Photographers are fighting to remove noise, CGI artists are adding it; photographers are using digital techniques like focus stacking to extend depth of field, while CGI artists begin with unlimited depth of field and artificially reduce it.

Spielberg recently mused that “audiences are so used to digital enhancements or replacements that they don’t trust cinema anymore. They see a movie and… if something beautiful strikes them emotionally, or in a beautiful way, they say ‘That was faked’ or ‘They did that later on the computer’.” He defended his latest epic film, War Horse, saying “we had three days of amazing sunsets, and we actually took advantage of those. There is no sky replacement.”

For our project for SIMPONI, a mixture of techniques were used, including filming objects in our studio for the 2:30m teaser and replicating these objects in CGI for cross-platform deliverables. This afforded the client and agency the control and flexibility they were after. With the full compliment of technical and creative skills, plus live-action and photography studio, in-house, TJ was able to seamlessly blend approaches for a cohesive integrated campaign where the technique is secondary.

What do you think, can you tell which elements are CGI and which are real? Share your comments on Facebook or Twitter

And if you want to see the flying man… CGI Experts on Flying Bird Man

For Facebook updates on Le Book Connections – click here!

For more details on the event - click here!

Check out the feature for the making of Pegasus in 3D World here, and CG Arena have broken down what we did and how we did it alongside the step by step images too - see here! Plus an insider interview!

We are also very proud to see that Dow got ‘Ad of the Day’ last week in AdWeek following the ‘Solutionism’ campaign ad’s. The main focus being the new environmentally friendly ‘quiet’ train alongside the various beautiful images we created for the global solutions company. Read the feature here!

See our projects here:
Pegasus and Dow

Thanks guys!

Note to Editors: If you are keen to find out more about any of our projects for any features or advertising, please contact Laura Frost at [email protected]

We were approached to create the stunning design of a powerful, fantastical horse to look as though it was made out of thousands of phones, for the huge launch of the new generation of smartphone by Huawei. Another piece of design imagery we are quite proud to be a part of, following the recent success of the beautiful CGI design work designed for the Sunday Times anniversary cover!

The symbolic winged horse is famed for representing speed and freedom which is why Huawei chose it as the central theme for the launch of the new phone ‘Ascend’, the “world’s fastest phone”. Each phone was built entirely in CGI (computer generated imagery), astonishing consumers and figures in advertising agencies all over the world as they observed the photo-realistic images at the Mobile World Congress last week.

So how did we do it?

The Huawei Ascend project came into us as a quick turn-around job and there wasn’t much time to nail the concept and visualise this stunning design. Luckily for us the client had a clear direction for the pose and camera position of the Pegasus, so we were able to match it quite quickly and get on with designing the intricate process of placing phones across the body and wings of the Pegasus.

We had to model the phone from a physical model as we had no CAD data, so we scanned it for accuracy then expertly modelled it to make it smooth, accurate and optimised enough that rendering 2000+ of them wouldn’t be an issue. We modelled details including the camera inners with lens and USB port as these are the small details which if modelled help pick up subtle lighting differences and detail that doing by texture wouldn’t give.
We’ve done a lot of jobs where something large is made up of many small items, so we have procedures and processes designed to help speed this up.

Dave Wortley, Lead Technical CGI Artist at Taylor James, says “The placement was extremely important, to help emphasize the shape and form of the body, and design a complex wing structure which felt light yet solid. A combination of in-house tools as well as manual placing and adjustment was used to ensure there were no phones overlapping or interpenetrating which turned into quite a bit of a jigsaw puzzle!”

Once the Phone had been modelled and positions specified, we swapped out the proxy low-res phone models, switched to our high resolution 20,000 poly version, which with over 2000 phones making up the structure of the Pegasus, meant we had over 40 million polygons in the scene, which as we were rendering at a large 8k resolution, meant we could see lots of detail close-up.

The next challenge was lighting, trying to get a smooth rim-lit look with such a facetted shape we encountered issues straight away with the falloff from lights not being smooth across the model because of the angular nature of the geometry. We created a complex light rig involving curved lights to light small parts of the Pegasus with different lights and then at the rendering stage we rendered multiple versions of lighting setups which allowed our Retouchers to paint in extra lighting and reflection where they felt it was necessary to get a nice result.

Why CGI?

Its projects like this which would be almost impossible without CGI, the lighting was so complex that there is no way it could have been done in a studio with Photography. Taylor James ensure they invest time heavily at the start of projects like this, modelling accurately and preparing it for good detail levels so we can re-use the original phone asset and render an individual phone at high resolution for further product shots.

This is highly valuable as advertising campaigns are more and more integrated across digital, print and motion platforms. See the project page for more images!

Replacing our old menu system is our latest and greatest feature so far ~ our new filter box! You can now see all our categories in one quick, easy glance. This should make it much easier to immediately hide everything irrelevant and keep browsing focused and simple. We’ve also added a couple of brand new options…

The first is a keyword search, based on job title, agency and client. This is a really quick way of finding a job you’ve seen before or to check any work by a particular agency. Try typing in ‘Nissan’!

The next option came about through our MD’s penchant for organising jobs by colour. “Why not let the user do this?” we thought, so we did. Now you can choose a colour from the filter box and voilà! You are presented with a glorious page of blue jobs, perfect for creating mood-boards.

If you have any other comments or suggestions that would make our site easier to use, please contact us on [email protected]

Chosen for Lürzer’s prestigious ‘Ad of the week’  award, our Pretty Polly campaign has been making waves all over the country. From animated displays to nationwide billboards. See it in pride of place on Lürzer’s website or find out more information about the job right here!

The concept has been developed by agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay, to promote designs by fashion label, House of Holland, for its latest range of tights. The campaign is being widely featured in fashion and lifestyle publications and online, including Grazia, Glamour, Heat, Sugar, Harpers, Nylon, MTV, Daily Mail, as well as outdoor billboards and digital OOH displays nationwide. The campaign is running for 6 months.

Our team of artists integrated the photography of fashion photographer, Jolly, with Computer Generated Imagery to create 3 stylised executions with versions for moving image and print. It is this ability to seamlessly transform still images into motion that makes the studio stand out as a complete creative production house, able to control an integrated production under one roof. worked closely with Jolly on set at the photography shoot, to ensure the necessary shots were captured to be integrated with the CGI environment. The attention to detail and involvement of the studio even at this first stage in the production was essential in ensuring the combination into 3D and motion was successful. Head of Retouch, Josh Rogers, says “Knowing the print ads were to be adapted for animation meant ensuring we had sufficient parallax to accommodate the camera moves. Our key consideration when building the city background was ensuring we had enough ‘reveal’ on our sky and building elements, so that as the camera moved down the street all the buildings had subtle realistic parallax within our comic book world.”

This campaign is another strong example of the use of limited assets to produce a holistic campaign across still and moving image. With rapid developments in advertising technology, such as the use of digital billboards and the rising number of digital magazines for portable devices, this elegant and cost-effective solution is at the height of demand. Our expertise and ability to work flexibly with diverse techniques across print and motion enabled this campaign to come to life.

We’re really honored to accept this award, we’d like to thank Aitken Jolly (photographer), Beattie McGuinness Bungay (agency), our families, friends, our dog, God, the universe, everyone who believed in us.

Our Founder, Glen Taylor, is in NYC now working with existing & new clients to bring a bit of British style to the American advertising industry!

Glen will be available to personally work with the local advertising agencies and partners. He said: “The US is such an important market for us and New York is the perfect entry point to base the initial office. Ideally we would have made the move sooner but we’ve been working hard to build a production studio that’s ahead of the industry curve. Our recent success is based on our ability to package solutions that combine all services, delivering the highest quality of work in-house.  Across print, digital and broadcast, creative inspiration and innovation is always at the heart of everything we do; being based in New York will drive a lot of positive change for us, working even closer with our clients in the US.”

Glen Taylor continues “I want people to know how passionate and committed to each and every job we are, in a constantly evolving industry it’s often difficult for production studios to marry creativity with technical proficiency. Taylor James is here to show that those things aren’t mutually exclusive; whatever the brief, we’ll deliver the solution that ticks all the boxes”.

Keep up-to-date with the move by following us on Twitter & Facebook.

We would like to say a HUGE thank you to all our lovely friends, family and clients who helped us raise an amazing £720.99 for cancer research.

A big pat on the back and a high five to Louise, Anna, Jennifer, Laura, Liz, Simone, Deborah and Kate (pictured, left to right)

There is still time to donate retroactively, just visit http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/taylorjames

Winning a:
- PLATINUM award for our Illustrative/CG work for Kalbitor
- Tourism Ireland was honoured with a GOLD
- GOLD for our illustrative and 3D interpretation of an owl on the cover for Creative Review in the News and Editorial section
- SILVER for our US TV ad for Bermuda Tourism

Creativity strives to recognise the brightest and best in the design and advertising industry, and is one of the longest running independent international competitions there is. Established as a travelling exhibit in conjunction with Art Direction Magazine in the 70s, it became one of the only books to showcase a cutting-edge work from across the US and abroad. Over the years this book has grown in size and style, and now takes a comprehensive look at winners from the awards. In 2011 the travelling exhibit was brought back and together with the Awards Annual and Creativity web site. Our Platinum win for Kalbitor meant there were lots of happy TJ faces around the office, so what made it stand out?

Owner and Creative Director, Jim Nisson, said: “Medical Illustrations are normally very dry and for the most part utilitarian as opposed to creative. Your work for Kalbitor was so amazingly real, with a seamless integration of techniques, like photography and CGI, which really arrested our attention. One judge gave it a perfect score and another stated “good use of craft.” The entry has also received numerous comments of admiration from viewers of the winner’s exhibit at the design shows.”

Wow…we’re blushing! The competition is judged by a panel of advertising and design professionals who volunteer their time and knowledge. To provide fresh perspectives, new judges are selected from year to year. With such a great range of work from all over the world, it meant the package had to be just as good. The beautifully bound book was designed by Sw!tch Studios, and was inspired by an old-age saying…

“As amazing as all of the winning pieces were, we could only imagine the amount of blood, sweat and tears that went into every little detail throughout the thousands of entries! With that in mind, we used splatters to add some interesting details to the book, like the splatters changing on the different page numbers. ” says Kathleen Ritchie, Marketing Director.

This stunning campaign, in collaboration with DEPOfilm, ran in conjunction with a 30sec TV commercial across Europe earlier this year. Featuring Man U football players Ryan Giggs, Edwin Van Der Sar, Anderson, Ji-Sung Park and Dimitar Berbatov, with the seamless integration of photography and virtual CGI environments.

Keith explains, “Turkish Airlines is a great example of how CGI and photography can be combined to deliver stunning imagery.  Logistically, the inside of the plane would not have been easy to shoot. With such limited space, the process within the actual environment would have been time consuming and cost-prohibitive for the client. We also only had a short time allocation with each player. We therefore built a 3D environment in 3ds Max, referencing detailed blueprints of the interior of the plane provided by the client. In order to maintain continuity, we created the CGI scene setups before the shoot in Manchester, so that detailed camera, lens and scene measurements could be followed.”

“We are happy to support the 3Ds London group and see it as a great opportunity to showcase our work but to also make new contacts.  There are some very talented people who attend these meetings; it’s always good to get their feedback on the work as well.”

Members of the 3Ds Max London user group meet on the first Wednesday of every month to discuss ideas, methods and projects in a friendly and relaxed setting. Presenters include key members of the advertising, architectural, design and animation industries. To find out more or how you can attend, visit their blog http://www.3dslondon.blogspot.com/

There have been over 300 Race for Life events happening across the UK from May up  until the end of July, and we’re thrilled to be part of it all, doing ‘our bit’ to help such a great cause. Since it began an incredible 5.4 million participants across the UK raised over £362 million to fund the work of over 4,000 researchers, doctors and nurses dedicated to helping more people beat cancer.

In order to make this run a success however, we are completely reliant on your support in raising as much money as we can. To donate as much or as little as possible, please visit our fundraising page!

SPONSOR US!

“I was thrilled at the chance to be on set with the rest of our photography team, and Saatchi & Saatchi Health’s creative team. It was all hands on deck from the start- so I had no other choice but to the get stuck in!

“TJ was asked to create an image that would promote the image of a healthy heart. By using 6 Hand Models, each with different ethnic backgrounds, the objective of the day was to capture each shade of each individual’s natural skin pigmentation and/or colour. With the right shots, the ultimate goal would be to retouch the images and bring the hands together (various fingers of each Hand Model) to create an illusion that would form the sacred shape of a heart.

”The day began with setting up the equipment; two of the most important pieces to the puzzle were setting up the proper backdrop and solid lighting. The set up, at first, seemed to appear quite complex but after closer inspection, I came to find that it was kept quite simple. Having our own internal photographer present, and having commissioned LJ Hopkinson for the shoot, once on set, we got to work on pulling together the backdrop. We placed 2 C-Stands (held down with 2 sandbags) about 6 to 8 feet apart from each other in the darker and more secluded end of the studio. Tightened to the C-Stands was a rectangular frame that would be used as the backdrop. Once tightened into position, a black fabric was draped over it, cutting a couple of slits through the material, allowing for the model hands to be poked through.

“LJ set up the camera, which was tethered to her laptop, allowing the team and the client to give instant approval or position changes from the shots taken. Kate, our Lead Retoucher, also set up a space for comping the various elements together. This allowed the rest of the team and client to see how it might look as a final piece and if it matched the brief.

“Before the six chosen hand models arrived, we had to run some very important tests. To set up the right angles/lighting, LJ used a couple of us already on set as hand model mimics. Snapping photo after photo, LJ moved the lighting around to bring out the finer details of our hands and fingers. By this point, I had been given a Canon 5D to take “Behind the Scenes” photos for the website.

“Each model took up to 30 minutes to shoot; conducting their hands in various positions poked through the hole in the backdrop. We cycled through each model quite smoothly, calling them back if needed. Once we had photos of each set of hands, we began to double up sets of hands, having different combinations of models hold their hands together through the backdrop. This enabled Kate to compare the different proportions and shapes of each hand that she would be able to work with.

“Soon enough, after a long photo processing session, Kate was given some shots to play with to help give Saatchi Health an idea of what the end project may look like. Our client was happy with all of the final shots!  After 6 ½ hours of shooting, it was time to break down the set and handover to retouch- where they would be comping the images together, giving the different fingers a seamless and refined look in the shape of a heart; picture perfect.”

See what our clients had to say about our services, visit the ‘Heart Hands’ project page.

Our latest healthcare feature for PMLive (pharmaceutical marketing) has been published, head on over to their site and read it.  To see more of our pharmaceutical/healthcare work, visit our All Work page.

After twenty-six successful years in the industry The Knowledge commissioned us to create the cover and dividers for their 2011 installment of their renowned directory, used by over 24,000 TV and film production professionals along with 300,000 online visitors a year. The shots have also been used as inspiration for their summer 2011 website re-launch!

The images feature some instantly recognizable objects from within the film and production industry, formed in 3D letters to make subtle but identifiable words. Our team’s collective passion for film-making and story-telling meant we were instantly drawn to this unexpected project, and wanted to create images that accurately reflected the industry. The Knowledge is all about the day-to-day functions of film and TV production and the hurdles you may come upon whilst on set. I wanted to create common scenes that looked incidental, as if you had just come upon the objects in a real-life environment. It would’ve been simpler to have placed the objects against a studio backdrop but for me it was important that we took photographs that would serve as a backdrop and suited the perspective of our shots.

We created the objects for each scene with CGI, integrated these with the backgrounds shot by our photographic department and brought the elements together with focus effects and colour grading by our retouching team. Having all of our services under one roof means we can control the production efficiently and ensure consistency in the quality of our work.

Due to time-constraints, we had our dedicated team of R&D technicians write a bespoke script and software plug-in that would automatically cover the shapes with lettering. Giving the images that ‘incidental’ feeling of coming across the objects in their natural state also meant extra time was invested in creating unique shaders for each object, allowing the hat, sandwich, and scissors to take on a feel of their real-life counterparts.

Edward Canavan, Associate Publisher at The Knowledge, said:

“We were so impressed with both the quality of the work you did for us and the professionalism of everyone involved. As one of London’s leading creative studios, we knew they would be the perfect fit with The Knowledge’s values of quality and creativity.

“The designs are stunning representations of real production environments on set, beautifully lit and rendered in amazing detail. We couldn’t be happier with the finished work and are confident our subscribers will love the design Taylor James created for the 2011 edition.”

ABOUT THE KNOWLEDGE

The Knowledge is the UK’s leading production industry directory, used by over 24,000 production staff within UK production companies.  First published in 1985, The Knowledge has become the first port of call for production professionals to find crew, facilities, studios, production services, and location suppliers, for their productions. The Knowledge contains over 18,000 companies and crew, and is recognised by the industry as being the most accurate source of contacts available. The Knowledge is also accessible online via www.TheKnowledgeOnline.com