Welcome, and thanks for dropping by.
I'm Adam, an animator / CG artist / creative director / motion designer from London.
From a background in illustration and ‘traditional’ animation, I started my digital career in web design and have since got back into animation with a vengeance, mainly using digital tools this time around. I feel extremely lucky that I’m able to make a living at what I enjoy so much.
I’m highly creative but also very hands-on and technical. I love making things look fantastic, however for me the creative process goes much deeper than visual design. Over the years I’ve practised many different skills in production, coding and software. I’m continually learning, and always keep an eye on current trends and technology.
I believe that this curiosity and technical awareness helps me to bring fresh ideas on how to answer briefs, and exploit mediums.
I can effectively direct shoots and sound sessions, as well as other filmmakers, designers and coders. My experience and attention to detail brings useful foresight when scoping and planning projects.
I’m confident in pitching to and consulting with clients, creatives, producers and account managers. As part of a team I’m open, friendly and hard-working, and thrive when working with other passionate and skilled people.
From thorough research, scoping, problem solving, adapting to feedback, and finessing, I take great pride in seeing a project through to successful realisation.
Over the years I’ve worked across a wide variety of projects for a diverse range of clients. I’ve put most of the noteworthy projects on another portfolio, which I’ll continue to update regularly:
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For your delectation: A seamlessly looping psychedelic smoke belching inebriated fish. That's Wollop.
My involvement: Direction, Production
Working with Compost Creative, I created 6 clips for the Netflix film A Trip to Infinity.
Mostly made with Cinema 4D & Octane.
My involvement: Production
Moon surface complete with dinosaur boot prints. Velociraptor was adapted from Turbosquid but I modelled the space suit and set up a simple rig with the help of deformers to animate it. In the film the clip was graded to resemble NASA footage from the 1970's.
I created the train, with scanned human commuters. The numerous wireframe visuals utilised various techniques including X-particles 'Edge Spline' tool.
Numerous layers (some of which created in 3D) and composited in After Effects.
Moon surface using high res maps from NASA.
NASA maps were used to create the Earth and Moon.
Use of Cloners, effectors and Octane scatter.
Above & Beyond's groundbreaking interactive 3D billboard for Subway, allowing passers-by to virtually build their dream Sub on-screen.
Working as part of a team with Wellcom London, I helped build the sandwiches in CG, as well as much of the animation used. Made with Cinema 4D & Redshift.
My involvement: Co-Production
This is the first project of Wollop - a new brand I've made to explore my own illustration and animation.
Hasty Cyclists are an NFT collection of seamlessly looping characters riding their fixie bikes flat out, with cloth and hair dynamics, and added anime style graphic elements.
My involvement: Direction, Production
Working with agenices Stink Studios and Yumsk, I created some of the artworks used in a recent Revolut social campaign. The animations were designed to loop seamlessly in either 5 or 10 seconds. Made in Cinema 4D & Octane.
View the individual clips looping here.
My involvement: Production
C4D cel-shaded Usain Bolt running around a 3D town, looking at stuff. And heading a football.
My involvement: Production, Co-Direction
A personal project, playing with character rigging, cel motion type overlays and deformers in Cinema4d. Sound fx with a hand fan, camera lens, and synths plus my computerized voice. Shot in Olympic Park, London.
My involvement: Production, Direction
Valentines ballet for De Beers Jewellery social campaign. Animated in C4D with Arnold render.
My involvement: Direction, Production
A self-led piece, I wanted to combine camera tracking with cel animation.
Back in April 2020 I shot an empty Piccadilly Circus, tracked the footage, added a character that I had created a few years back, simulated some smoke, and hand animated the cel magic spell overlays.
Inspired by the film Into The Spider-verse, I also wanted to inject some comic-book style, which kicks in when the wizard unleashes his spell. For this I made a custom shader in Blender for the character and used Trapcode Form for the half-tone effect.
Made with Blender, Cinema 4D, Animate and After Effects.
My involvement: Direction, Production
A Tron-esque parade of the features of Audi's phone app. Use of X-Particles and C4D's Sketch shader.
My involvement: Production, Co-Direction
An exercise in character design and animation.
I modelled him in Blender, then rigged and animated him in C4D, along with the materials and hair. Rendered with C4D's Physical Renderer.
My involvement: Direction, Production
Acru is a new form of money from the world of trading.
This film introduces Acru and explains what is is, using a character whose form is the first letter of the logo.
He travels through various stock footage clips and other environments that I generated in CG.
Pretty much all the scenes were done in 3D using Cinema 4D, and stock footage clips were camera and object tracked.
Because of his limitations (no hands, arms or any facial features!), a lot of work was needed to express his character through animating his actions.
For this project I studied and endeavored to apply the '12 basic principles of animation' that were introduced by Disney, so that the character had a fluid, traditional and human feel, even though it was made with software.
My involvement: Production
A personal project, because... well, I like bananas.
My involvement: Production, Direction
From static illustrations, I animated this series of social ads for Costa / BBH.
I redrew the illustrations in After Effects, so that I was able to animate the characters and give the line a 'wobble' akin to traditional hand-drawn animation.
My involvement: Production
Take a tour around a dolls-house version of the Mayfair Hotel. Made proudly with Blender. Try out the interactive version.
My involvement: Production, Co-Direction
I brought to life the illustration by Tom Haugomat. Mainly done by animating shapes in AfterEffects.
My involvement: Production
The hands were rigged and modified in C4D; holes in ground were generated via Veroni fracture.
Products were modelled - some using projection mapping techniques to match the retouched studio photos.
My involvement: Production
All done in C4D, the character was rigged using spline dynamics and built with sweeps. The volume mesher was used to bind the sweeps together.
My involvement: Production
An offshoot from my work for Pedrino, an alcoholic spritz. All done in Blender / Cycles, apart from the table caustics which I rendered with LuxCore and brought back in as a baked texture.
My involvement: Production, Direction
Promotional video for Microsoft Visio, to show how the software can help streamline a business.
My involvement: Production, Direction
Bringing to life illustrations by Serge Seidlitz, this was screened around the check-in desks at Gatwick airport.
My involvement: Co-Production
Made for my brother's start-up, an English learning social media website.
My involvement: Production, Direction
A conference video to introduce Fidelity's electrifying fund managers. Made with Trapcode effects.
My involvement: Prooduction, Co-Direction
Elmer and Brad the cat (originally illustrated by Thin Martian colleague Pete Moores), embark on a Microsoft Office fuelled adventure away from the office.
My involvement: Production, Co-Direction
I have created a few 3D assets for Virgin Media, which have been used across print, web and TV. These include the cable, Glass display boxes and their V6 Box.
My involvement: Production
From the raw footage, I worked on all the CG and retouch for this project through to delivery.
The floor and ceiling were CG elements that were combined with the car footage.
The headlight flares (and dust) were also fabricated.
The footage was panned manually and so very wobbly and needed to be stabilized. Camera tracking was done first, and I used a CG model of the car for the matte, and also the headlights which were different from the footage.
Various elements of the car needed to be retouched, including a black line right down the middle – a reflection of a seam in the light-box above it.
My involvement: Production
A campaign that ran across social, DOOH and YouTube, the brief was to replace a refrigerator door with a CG phone.
I designed and modelled the phone; materials, lighting and environment were all done in Arnold / C4D. The footage of the opening fridge door was matched in After Effects using a combination of warping and time re-mapping. In the end, the atmosphere was done in AfterEffects with use of Particular.
My involvement: Production
In this extended 'director's cut' are two preceding clips, which are close-ups of the CG phone. These are meant as take-offs of high-end 'product porn' phone adverts from the likes of Apple and Samsung.
Artworks for NetApp scoial ads – American football for US markets and soccer for all others.
The players were found on Turbosquid, and I applied the same motion-captured character animation from Mixamo on both. It needed some tweaking - I stopped the feet from sliding around when they were planted on the floor, and for the American football one I made the kick more of a 'hoof' than a penalty kick.
Using Arnold for the renderer, I adapted the materials, and for the soccer player added hair and set up a cloth sim for the shorts. The American football used a dynamics sim for the ball and tee.
The 'bullet-time' was done by baking the animations as alembics, then tweaking the frame offset in C4D.
My involvement: Production
CG spicy sauce bottle with electric atmosphere
My involvement: Production
A social campaign for KFC at the beginning of the Coronavirus lock-down, where celebrities were filmed doing a cooking competition against each other.
This clip shows the teaser animation advertising the show, then the winner announcement, both shown on social media.
Made in After Effects apart from the confetti and some of the 'kinetic' type which I did in C4D using the excellent gelatine deformer.
I also did the sound fx.
My involvement: Production
A social and print ad campaign Tesco liked so much they used it three years in a row.
Different ads for product-specific deals that ran throughout December 2021.
The photographed products were combined with the calendar environment and decorations which were built in Cinema 4D, using dynamic simulations for the decorations' movement. X-particles for the smoke.
Composited in After Effects, adding some Christmas sparkle. I also did the sound FX.
My involvement: Production
+44 (0)7879 401476
adam@adam-crowley.com