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1/12/2026
Tomorrow we will be pitching our concept to the New York mentors. Today will involve a lot of finalizing of ideas and concepts, as well as using tools such as Gemini to create even more reference to utilize in the future.
All created with Gemini AI
The team and I finalized our storyboard that we will be covering tomorrow in the pitch
Storyboard by Wren Pellant
Along with that we created some more pre-vis of the ring itself to better show our concept off for the mentors.
FX Test by me
Material and Lighting test by Noelle Robertson
FX Test by Cae Parkhill
Environment Pre-vis by Gracie Szymanski
And finally, here is our final presentation that we will be showcasing tomorrow!
Pitch Edited by Wren Pellant
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1/10/2026
With my shot concept in my mind, I began working on previs in order to prepare for our Pitch Presentation on 1/13. Something I had been worried about since the idea of water came up was how would I create realistic behavior of a ring falling into liquid. Now, Houdini does have tools such as Vellum fluids, which would simulate the physics of the ring colliding with water; However, I wanted to stray away from this as I am much more comfortable with FLIP Fluids. Not only that, but If I could procedurally animate the ring animation with RBDs, it would save me from the headache in the long run, as well as being more art directable.
Above is my resulted flipbook after utilizing RBD Bullet simulations. Using Geometry VOPS inside the pre-solve of the SOP solver, I was able to get control of the @w(Spline Weight) inside VOPS and use it to randomly add rotational velocity to the ring pre-sim. Below is my Bullet solvers node tree.
DOP level of SOP level Bullet Solver
VOP Network
After the general idea of the movement was finished, I moved on to actually creating the bubbles. Using a pop simulation I simmed points from a peaked version of my dummy ring model(So the points didn't come from inside the model).
DOP level nodes
Result
Result + Camera
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1/8/2026
Today, the group met and came up with storyboards and continued brainstorming, we were able to decide on 5 different shots we wanted in the advertisement.
Shot 1: Ring is shown sitting on a pedestal then fall off, moving on its own.Shot 2: It falls into a pool of water, with the bubbles pulsating like a heartbeat.Shot 3: Use a flower blooming as a way to show cycle temperature tracking.Shot 4: Ring lands on cloth show to show the sleep tracking.
Shot 5: A final hero shot where the ring gets a well lit beauty shot before forming the O in the name.
Of these 5 shots, 3 of them(2,3,4) include hefty amount of FX work. For this reason we split the 3 shots between the 3 FX artists. My shot I will be focusing a majority of my time on will be Shot 2, the water shot. I began creating some previs for my shot utilizing ai tools.
Shot 5: A final hero shot where the ring gets a well lit beauty shot before forming the O in the name.
Of these 5 shots, 3 of them(2,3,4) include hefty amount of FX work. For this reason we split the 3 shots between the 3 FX artists. My shot I will be focusing a majority of my time on will be Shot 2, the water shot. I began creating some previs for my shot utilizing ai tools.
Prompt
Render created using Gemini AI
Render created using Gemini AI
After some extremely mediocre results with purely prompting, I took a step away and began using my own CG images as composition reference that I would create in Houdini and plug it into Gemini. This gave me much better results.
Prompt
CG Render I made in Houdini
Render created using Gemini AI
CG Flipbook I made in Houdini
Render created using Gemini AI
While doing this I also worked on creating the heart-beating bubbles. After some ideation I came up with this.
CG Flipbook I made in Houdini
Callout Sheet
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1/7/2026
Today me and the team met up to discuss concept ideas for our storyboard. Due to us being an FX heavy team, we wanted to utilize that to the fullest and create an extremely unique as well as visually appealing ad that will compliment the high tech prompt while also having plenty of FX. For our ad we wanted to see the ring going through multiple locations locations(similarly to the reference videos from 1/6). Below are a few ideas we came up with and how they relate to the Oura Ring.
Ring falling into water which represents the Oura Ring's ability to track stress and comfort levels.
Ring bouncing on waves that resembles a heart on a cardiograph. This would obviously be a visual representation of how the Oura Ring tracks heart rate.
Ring rolling around Cloth/Cushion to depict the Oura Ring's power of tracking the users sleep in great detail
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1/6/2026
The SCAD and New York collaboration officially kicked off today. We spent the first session getting the lay of the land and meeting our team. I'm very excited to be part of a group with Noelle Robertson, Wren Pellant, Gracie Szymanski, and Cae Parkhill. We’ve already carved out our roles, with Gracie, Cae, and I handling the FX, Noelle on Lookdev and Lighting, and Wren taking charge of Compositing.
The prompt for this collaborative project was High Technology. After a few back and forth ideas, we landed on the Oura Ring. This is an advanced health tracker disguised as a piece of high-end jewelry. This piece of tech can be used to track Temperature, Heart Rate, Sleep, etc.
We immediately began ideation on the concept of our advertisement; as well as looking for potential references. I used the rest of the time in class sifting through a ton of ring related advertisements. Below are a few that will act as references for our storyboard concept and potential FX ideas.
https://youtu.be/lCE7dmBojyg?si=jZ14kN33m2s3_BnX - Oura Ring 4
https://youtu.be/NwAqmM1AgCc?si=vc8H99Hyyuq0QsFZ - Tangem Ring
https://youtu.be/cuRmwctvZ2k?si=tGD7XUpD_FbBYt6K - Oura Ring 3
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gl2tglNLe9I - Galaxy Ring