exovolar

democratize
jetpacks

nailing the
narrative

Exovolar is a groundbreaking startup with a mission to democratize personal air mobility, bringing the dream of flying within reach for everyone. Their innovative jetpack technology aims to revolutionize transportation, offering people like you and me the opportunity to soar the skies. Their prolific founders themselves also happen to be constantly flying around the world in a fundraising whirlwind.

simplified message

The message is simple: Exovolar makes jetpacks. We felt if we just visualized their product in action, the audience would get it.

product
visualization

We translated a CAD model of their sleek industrial design into a fully textured 3D prop we could show off in our film.

design
challenges

I human characters

Exovolar’s technology is all about letting humans experience the thrill of flight. That story felt like it contained a mandate to include animated human characters. This is notoriously one of the tougher tasks in animation, but the context of the video made it doable. We used a mix of motion capture clips and hand key-framing to bring some humanity to our avatar.

II flight suit

Exovolar had designed a custom flight suit that we needed to translate into a 3D environment. Using reference photography, we replicated their designs in Substance Painter 3D. Once we had the aesthetic nailed, we did some physics simulation on the cloth to create that sense of speed as the wind whipped the fabric around.

III filmic aspirations

It felt necessary to find a story arc even within this short teaser video. We wanted to avoid making flying look monotonous, so we referenced compositions from movies like Iron Man when designing the shots. We wanted to match the kinetic feel of those films, while still creating a story arc that had some drama. The lift-off at the beginning and the brand hero moment at the end gave us just enough variety to keep things engaging.

We experimented with different times of day during the design process, eventually finding the warm sunset palette complimented their suit design nicely. We quickly realized the streaking reflections on the visor could be an ownable visual element so we leaned into that for a memorable finale.