ATOMIC: Exercises to communicate

Rafael Avendaño, Diego Castro and Santiago Tobón are the creators of ATOMIC, a Bogotá-based "Project Studio" focused on computer animation and dedicated to providing moving images to the advertising market.

If you find them on the street you may think that they belong to a rock band but their story is another, that although it requires instruments these are nothing more than a mouse, a keyboard, a screen and... a lot of imagination.

The idea of communicating was the one that managed to bring them together first working their ideas in graphic design for print, later, and almost unintentionally, comes their incursion into the world of video as a logical step to follow after handling static images, and with it comes animation, all with a "high level of image processing" as Santiago points out.

Each with more or less defined and similar purposes sat down one day to talk and decided that, since the three coincided and had clarity about the intention, usefulness, functionality, attractiveness and what they enjoyed communication, it was a good time to join.

What happened during the first year of work was decisive because it allowed them to point in a certain direction and look for spaces where they could find resources and focus on video and then end up making commercials.

And it is in the field of commercials where ATOMIC has found the opportunity to develop ideas to make them great visually, and where they have been able to make their creative contributions thanks to the fact that there is still the possibility of finding agencies that offer freedom to enrich projects.

"As ATOMIC grew, we discovered tools to do creative exercises and that has been our intention. We have wanted our work to be an activity in which we have the opportunity to have fun developing the things we know and that we like to do, and we have achieved that in commercials in particular, because they give us the opportunity for a high dose of creativity "adds Diego.

TV&V: What resources do you have to do the work you do?

Rafael Avendaño: Apart from us?... Basically we work on robust PC platforms, processors and that. With the fastest disks we can because that's one of the things that saves a lot of time. A while ago we started working on D1 video that is a rather recent possibility on PC's that puts the image standard at an optimal level as it should be for commercials. The card we are using is the new Hollywood, of which only one version has come out. It is a 2.1 card of a cool quality.

They are very poisoned "clones". A cool advantage of the species is that one can choose very thin or very generic hardware , as needed. We work with boards of the best bandwidth and several processors per machine, at least two. There are small workstations that are to basically make Photoshop type image and there are the two large machines, within the term PC, which are the ones in which we do multilayer editing or 3D generation.

Our work has a lot of craftsmanship even if it's done with a mouse, and we've never believed in the big devices of hundreds of thousands of dollars, we've never believed that's the key to doing something.

Santiago Tobón: Before we worked everything here and then we made some tips secuences of the project and we took them to a place from where you could download very high quality, but at this moment as we have the D1 card that allows us to better manage the projects.

TV&V: What kind of technology is required for a project studio like ATOMIC to compete in a professional market?

Rafael Avendaño: I think the problem is indian and not arrow. There are many possibilities in terms of technology and resources, but I do not believe that the teams of hundreds of thousands of dollars will solve something profound for one; while I do believe that a small team also doesn't solve anything that you haven't previously solved. It's not going to solve anything that you haven't solved in your head.

Diego Castro: The cases exist and there are many in which there are immense machines delivered to an operator, to a person who more than knowing how to handle it well knows the options that a program has and knows by heart the manual of use of a software within a system with certain characteristics. That doesn't solve anything. I think it's easier to solve that stage than the preliminary one. We have been clear in observing that the exercises in which we have had the best results are the exercises in which we invest the greatest amount of time in the preliminary design phase; before sitting down with the mouse and keyboard to play. Then one looks for the tools within the variety that has a more or less sophisticated equipment.

TV & VIDEO: What kind of software do you use?

Rafael Avendaño: What we use most is After Effects.

Santiago Tobón: We knew the After because we came from working in Photoshop which is an ADOBE program and it was incredibly intuitive to move to the After because like Photoshop it is a program that allows one to be quite intuitive. We do not read manuals and we do not do things in the most orthodox way but we still find formulas to do them. That happened to us with the After. The After Effects is the platform in which we integrate the things that are done in 3D, those that are worked in real image, those that are made of vectors and what is done in video, cinema or Photoshop. It is the platform on which we integrate all the techniques.

Rafael Avendaño: The advantage of After is that being a relatively cheap program allows you to get very different visuals and there are not many programs that give that option, for example, animation software as they master in a certain way, handle certain palettes and give a recognizable visual to a brand, it is not even the style of the one who does it but what he does it with and that seems to me quite pulled.

I also love that it is still a software that is worth a third of a MAYA option or a fifth of others and for this reason does not commit one to make clumsiness to compensate for the expense. It is still very versatile in terms of results. One can make a 3D as plastic as you need or as flat as you want.

TV&V: You make this look practically like child's play, is it that easy?

Rafael Avendaño: No, it's worse than easy, it's big kids' play!... There are rigors, things that need to be watched and that, but I think it's something that can't be taken so coldly. It is not a matter of method, ultimately not even of resources but of pointing towards a product and looking for the tools to finally elaborate it.

Santiago Tobón: That happens a lot with commercials because they are twenty-second exercises and that is where the possibility of purification, of making technical approaches, of experimenting and all that is. Meanwhile, in a series of twenty-three minutes a week one marries with a single technique and doing animation every week is crazy! Every time we do an exercise we invent a formula to do it and that seems more fun than anything else.

TV&V: Do you think that the "Project Study" is a trend of the medium because they are more accessible?

Rafael Avendaño: They are like two ways of seeing life. There are people who want to be very rich and work a lot, but the idea of us is to work rich and little. What a fear to be a big company and have a little commitment, that is a very heavy burden physically. Our idea is to stay in the category of artisans because the industrial category, to me personally, seems very scary.

Diego Castro: I think it's a formula that has to start working to be able to attend to a lot of projects. More than thinking big, we try to think about where we can find ways to play. Obviously, the ideal is to find where the best challenges are, the most attractive ones that allow us to continue developing ideas.

TV&V: Do you think about the foreign market?

Rafael Avendaño: Yes, we are very interested. For example, Central America is a market covered by a producer, the rest is done or comes from outside.

Diego Castro: We find it interesting about the market outside because we are able to offer high technical quality, very high creative quality and, in particular, very good prices. In the midst of all the crisis has forced us to offer better costs in general in this market.

In only Central and South America there are many possibilities. In Spain there is also an interesting market because they notice that their creative formulas are somewhat saturated and find refreshing what we can offer.