This is the promo for the fifth season of Vikings that I worked on as a senior animator at BigStar. It was a great experience to be able to play such a crucial role in the production of this spot. I got to animate the shot with the axe buried in the ashes as well as the final shot of the Viking banner rising over the flames. I spent an extensive period of the production building highly detailed materials in Octane for the axe including the iron of the blade, the wood handle, and the leather straps. I also made a custom texture for the Viking banner that would have the family crest as well as burns and tears in the fabric. For the ashes, I layered multiple X-particles systems and Houdini particle systems on top of each other until I achieved the exact movement and density of ashes that we needed for this spot. In the final shot I created a cloth detailed cloth sim for the banner being raised up over the fire.

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BigStar also did the promo spot for the following season. The theme changed from buried in the ashes to buried in the snow. For the spot I had the opportunity to technical direct. I knew immediately that Houdini's grain solver would be the perfect tool to simulate mounds of snow blowing away to reveal the show logo and network Logo. The grain solver produced a very realistic behavior to the snow. In order to meet the creative direction for this spot, I had to customize my solver to ensure that the logos would fully reveal but also maintain a natural interaction with the snow. I also created several other particle systems to have secondary snow particles blowing across the ground and in the air.