Trinity Animation: Land of 400,000 Hits.. and growing

On October 20, MAPA Director Dylan Dietz attended a special reception at the home of Trinity Animation President Jim Lammers.  The party was a public celebration of Trinity’s animation depicting the studio's visualization of a proposed C7 Corvette design for 2014.  The animation went viral on YouTube, exceeding 400,000 hits in August.

This all began in November of 2011, after Jalopnik and other sites leaked details of the design, which had previously been kept secret.  Trinity designed their animation based on what they thought the car would look like, employing the company’s trademark realism.

We caught up with Lammers who shared a few words on the success with MAPA.

MAPA: What does this amazing social media response mean for Trinity Animation?

LAMMERS: For starters we are actually animating a car project now, in fact a Corvette related car project. It's our first commercial car work and we're really glad to work on it. This is a company that makes retro bodies and puts them on modern cars, so people can have classic looks without giving up any modern safety or performance.

MAPA: What can you tell us about the challenges that went into designing your Corvette spot?

LAMMERS: The challenges were particularly unique compared to our usual work because the target was unknown. So we weren't modeling something we could see, we were trying to build something from little glimpses and hints. It was a real challenge and a lot of the time it seemed like we were in the mode of a car designer ourselves. That's a big part of why it took so long; there was no way to know if or when we had it "right."

MAPA: We heard that you had some criticism. What was that about? 

LAMMERS: YouTube criticism is unhelpful, people there seem to delight in simply saying silly things, or one-upping each other in vulgarity. I never read it. But we did get some thoughtful and constructive thoughts on the corvetteforum.com site, which was fun.

I think our car is a good first impression of what it might look like and the ONLY 3D reveal of the car to date.

It's easy to make one drawing of one angle, like car magazines do. But it's much more rewarding for the public to see the car moving and to see it from all angles! I am fairly certain the final GM design will be better and sleeker but we did the best to combine Jalopnik's predictions with our own best guesses to make something close enough to be interesting.

MAPA: What's going down with Archer?  You shared a sneak peek at the party but what can you share with Trinity fans?

LAMMERS: We are halfway through season 4 production and we've had a chance to preview a few of the early episodes. Adam Reed continues to shock, delight and entertain with his scripts. It seems like he has huge amounts of new places to take this cast and this show. I don't know how he can keep the funny turned up to 11 show after show but he does!

MAPA: Tell us about your musical contributions to your work.

Jim Lammers on the Gibson

LAMMERS: I really liked being able to put my own music on the Corvette video and having hundreds of thousands of people hear my work. I wrote something I thought would make good anticipatory "film score" like music, and then played guitar, cello, drums, bass and keyboards to put all those parts together. I only did the cello on the opening jaws-like segment as the sun shines into the opening doors of the warehouse. But the other parts I played straight through. I wish I had time to have done it in a proper studio for better fidelity (particularly with the drums) but I wanted to get the video done and out before it was old news!

MAPA:  Thanks Jim for your responses and all your warm hospitality.

If you want to go behind the scenes of Trinity’s C7 concept animation with High Res Wallpaper Images of this car, click here.