AAA
Heartspace
Headspace Commercial
Heartspace explores the inner process of emotional transformation. The commercial follows a grid of living hearts, each representing a person shaped by change and pressure. As the camera moves closer, we begin to see the hidden struggles beneath the surface. The tension builds until one heart bursts, releasing a wave of particles that reform into a renewed and peaceful shape.
Creative Direction
The creative direction focuses on turning abstract emotion into motion. The film moves through four phases: stillness, tension, release, and clarity. The composition begins calm and ordered, then slowly descends into turbulence before returning to stillness.
Visual Tone
The color palette begins in cool pinks and whites and transitions into warm golden and red tones. Light evolves from clean and distant to soft and immersive making the sparkles prominent. It’s expressing the shift from control to acceptance. The environment remains minimal, allowing the hearts and their transformation to carry the emotion.
Process
The opening grid of hearts was animated through a VEX-driven system that keeps every heart oriented toward the camera. A custom setup allows an animated driver object to influence rotation as if sending a wave through the grid. This approach gives full art directability and natural synchronization between motion and emotion.
The core of the project focuses on the deforming heart simulation. Points are scattered within an object and connected into looping paths where spheres travel, stretching into capsules mid-motion to create a sense of speed. Each contact with the surface causes a soft deformation that conveys material tension. Parameters control ball count, path randomness, deformation strength, and timing, with VDB offsets maintaining safe motion inside complex shapes. The system re-seeds itself to avoid intersections, using non-linear ramps and orientation-based morphing to achieve organic motion.
The burst sequence combines Vellum for the heart explosion and RBD for the spiky core. The final morph introduces glowing energy streaks created through VEX to capture the sense of energy reassembling into calm
The project uses procedural control to keep every effect tightly connected to the theme of release and renewal.
