A seventeen-second product film for the Microsoft Surface Headphones 2, animated in Blender. Storyboarded on paper first, then built shot for shot.
Subject
Date
Role
Tools
Output
01 — About
A film whose only job is to explain a shape
Product visualization is not advertising and it is not a technical drawing. It has to make an object legible, its proportion, its materials, how the parts meet, to somebody who will never hold it. This is a self-directed exercise in doing that with one familiar object and nothing else in frame: no set, no hands, no copy.
02 — Storyboard
Four scenes, drawn before anything was modelled
The sequence was blocked out on paper first. Four frames, one intention each, in the order they would be cut. Drawing it first is what kept the camera from wandering once the scene was open in Blender.
Scene 1
Introduce product shape (e.g. earpads)
Scene 2
Side form and brand logo
Scene 3
Close up, internal components
Scene 4
The overall headphone view
03 — Board to render
Each scene, as drawn and as rendered
The sketches are rough on purpose, they fix the framing and the subject of each shot, not the detail. Set against the final frames, they show how little the plan needed to change.
Scene 1 · Introduce product shape
The board asks for the earpad read first. The render opens on the earcup in three-quarter view, so the soft ring and the metal yoke arrive before the product is recognisable as a whole.
Storyboard
Final frame
Scene 2 · Side form and brand logo
The sketch marks the four-square logo on the flat of the band. The render holds exactly that face, with the band running out of frame so the mark is the only thing to look at.
Storyboard
Final frame
Scene 3 · Close up, internal components
Drawn as a row of concentric ellipses pulling out of the earcup. The render separates the stack the same way, with the driver as the one warm-coloured part in an otherwise grey film.
Storyboard
Final frame
Scene 4 · The overall headphone view
The board ends on a plain front view. The render resolves there too, level and centred, after every close shot has been paid off.
Storyboard
Final frame
04 — Stills
Frames from the finished film
Pulled straight from the render at full square resolution. The film is built to hold up as stills as well as motion, because most of them end up as stills anyway.
Opening, low key
Earcup and band
Yoke and driver mesh
Earcup, three-quarter
Stack beginning to separate
Leather and metal
Soft focus, pads
Wide, resolved
05 — The film
The Film
Credits and scope
The Surface Headphones 2 are designed and manufactured by Microsoft. This is an independent visualisation exercise, not commissioned work and not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft: the industrial design is theirs, lighting, camera work and render are mine. Built and rendered in Blender.