Art Director's Role in a 3D Video

In a recent commercial project—a corporate film for a company in Dubai — I had the opportunity to do some art direction. The video itself was fairly straightforward, mostly composed of live-action shots. However, it featured a key 3D scene with a drilling rig.

You might ask, why is an art director needed here? The reason is to give clear creative direction to the 3D specialists. The client (as is often the case) requested something simple: “just show this pipe and a couple of sensors in 3D.”

That 3D scene lasted for 19 seconds in the video:

So, what does the art director do in this situation? They answer the following questions:

1. How should the pipe move? We studied how it works in reality with the client and based its motion in the video on that understanding.

2. In reality, the pipe is dirty and made of different materials. We couldn't show it like that. So, how should it look? We explored different textures and materials, eventually settling on shiny metal with red accents.

3. What should the environment around the pipe look like? Should it be the earth or an empty space? We came up with a gradient brown background, adding elements of soil in a parallax effect.

4. How can we show the sensors without actually showing them? It was crucial to label the sensors and indicate their locations. We decided to add a schematic view of the pipe to demonstrate signal transmission inside it.

It seems like just a 19-second video, but the production team had to answer a lot of questions along the way!

Full video:

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