weareflink is a design studio / production company hybrid based in Hamburg - Germany. Specializing in 2D/3D driven Animation work and the seemless blend with live action. weareflink has been busy non stop since opening its doors in March 2009. The award winning team behind weareflink has been working on projects together even prior theybecameflink.

Niko Tziopanos is one of the creative masterminds and founders of weareflink. Niko and one of his partners & Executive Producer Andreas Lampe were in charge of CCTV at weareflink.

"No not again" were the words that Niko first mumbled when seeing the agency boards. But after a closer look and a week of creating styleframes, a storyline and considering Fume FX and Krakatoa as some funny tools to play with the passion was back. So 6 weeks and nights, a trip to Beijing later, Niko and his team had played with lots of ink, used the necessary tools and worked across a few different platforms to create the CCTV image commercial. One of the challenges was communication with a very different language and culture and being dependent on translators in the process. Never the less this experience was quite rewarding as everyone involved paid a lot of attention to details and being precise as to what was necessary to understand the other side. There has been a lot of mutual respect, which was obviously very enjoyable. More time would have been great, but we are quite happy with the product. See for yourself.

Welikeifyoulike.

Niko Tziopanos
Director
weareflink

James Hagger is the Executive Producer and Founder of Troublemakers.tv 

Troublemakers.tv is a production company based in Paris that represents a new generation of directors who use live action, 2D and 3D animation to created innovative imagery for commercials and music videos. TM represents weareflink and Niko Tziopanos for commercials in France and certain international markets.

We were approached by MMIA to produce a commercial for CCTV. The aim was to create a commercial that represented a journey from traditional China to modern China, all made out of Chinese Ink to represent the history of CCTV, China and above all The Power of Branding. MMIA approached us because Niko had made a previous film with Ink called Symphony in Red and they had thought he would be the appropriate Director for this particular film.

After a few weeks of pre-production we travelled to Beijing in China for the PPM. We spent five days there to go through the fine details of the storyboard and contract with the Agency MMIA and CCTV. It was a wonderful experience for us to get to work with a Chinese agency and client and an interesting insight into the chinese culture and advertising industry.

Back in Europe we started working over the next six weeks on the post production process of the film. We had to combine some motion capture data from MocapLab, live action ink that we shot in studio and 3D to make this impressive film. 

Our team worked day and night to make this film happen within the tight schedule that we had. The film started from a low resolution animatic that would work as the skeleton of the film. Certain teams would then work on the different parts of the film from the 3D modeling, animation, shooting of Ink, integration of the motion capture, compositing and rendering. Niko and his team had to invent a workflow as the usual pipeline had to be adjusted to fit the different constraints and mediums used to create this film.

But after 6 very hard working weeks the film took shape and came to life. The final step was to worked with Supreme Music to create the music for the commercial.

Today we are very proud and happy to have worked with MMIA and CCTV. It was very important for us to portray the right image, to speak the right language, to show the right codes which Chinese people are used to. This is something as Europeans we had to research and learn and we hope we have managed to represent them in a respectful way.

James Hagger
Executive Producer
Troublemakers.tv