Week One

gracieszymanski04
Dec 30, 2025
7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Blog posts arranged newest to oldest.

1/12/2026

As we've been working this week, the group and I have been assembling our pitch deck, with all of our previs, references, and ideas, to present to the mentors during our first conversation with them. After professor feedback and putting our pitch through Claud AI for feedback as well, the group and I were able to create and polish our project pitch for "Omni" (our made up name for Oura Rings).

1/11/2026

As the group begins refining each of our shots, I was able to spend today working on previs for Shot 3. For the flowers, I starting looking into this tutorial from YouTube to see how other artists take on the blooming flower.

Flower blooming tutorial from Bao Motion Design

After viewing this tutorial and playing around a bit, I was able to make make this flower blooming previs:

Flower bloom previs version one

I then moved on to doing a quick scene set up for my shot. I focused on how the camera will look and general placements for the environment. I only focused on the first half of the shot and did not keyframe the ring leaving.

Shot 3 camera and scene set up previs

To update on the story, after each of us individually hashed out our shots, Wren was able to take some time and storyboard the whole ad. He added some really cool camera movements and transitions that I would have never thought of. Here is how the full ad is coming together:

1/8/2026

Today, the group met and we were able to all come together and show each other the storyboards that we individually came up with. From these storyboards and continued brainstorming, we were able to lock in on five shots we wanted to be in the ad:

Shot 1: Ring is shown sitting on a pedestal then fall off, moving on its own.
Shot 2: A way to show the heartbeat.
Shot 3: Use a flower blooming as a way to show cycle tracking through temperature.
Shot 4: A cloth show to show the sleep tracking abilities.
Shot 5: A final hero shot where the ring hovers mid air before the logo reaches the screen.

Each shot will include a different color ring with different transitions for changing that ring color. The ring will be moving on its own and exiting shots by going off screen, just like the Chef Boyardee commercial that I referenced earlier in my blog.

After deciding on these shots, the FX artists were each assigned a shot that they would manage and mostly complete (obviously allowing room for any collaboration if need be). I have been the leading voice for the flower shot so I will be tackling how we do this shot exactly.

In my ideation I came up with three option:

Option one, have a single flower with frost and the ring comes in and slowly hovers circling the flower as it then blooms after a warm glow comes from the inside. Depending on time could even have trails from the ring be blue then turn orange with the temp change but that would be extra later.

Option two, the ring falls into one bloomed flower with frosty flower bulbs around. The bulbs around would then one by one bloom after a warm glow comes from within. The main flower would then tilt at the end so that the ring could fall off.

Option three, the ring would fall into a floral setting with moss and flower bulbs. Rings of heat would then flow off of the ring and from that, the bulbs would then bloom. The ring would then keep moving down hill to the next shot.

After asking for feedback from my group and looking for refence, I decided to go with option 3! I'm very excited about building this environment and controlling the flowers blooming. The adjustment I will be making after peer feedback is that instead of doing the heat waves, I will still stick to the frost melting and then the flowers glowing from withing.

Below are some references I found for this shot from pinterest.com:

I also went ahead and prompted Google Gemini to show me what the ring could look like in this environment for this shot.

Prompt: Turn this ad into an ad for an oura ring, also promoting the fact that the ring can track menstrual cycles

I then created the full storyboards for this shot:

And I also created a quick contact sheet for the shot as well:

Lastly, I took some time today to look into some video references I will be able to use for the FX portion of this shot. I've linked these references below (all from youtube.com):

1/7/2026

Our group met up today to further discuss our ideas for the project and narrow down what we want to do. Wren came up with the idea to use the different colors to show different uses for the ring. From there, we started thinking of different uses and came up with these four to focus on:

Sleep Tracking
Heartbeat Monitor
Temperature /Cycle Tracking
Activity Tracking

We had a lot of ideas come up in this brain storm from these four uses and for the overall ad so each group member is going to be coming up with their own ideas for the overall ad so that we can put them all together tomorrow to form a final shot list.

My overall idea to tie the activities together would be to do a commercial in the style of the iconic Chef Boyardee commercials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e33KWTJPvuU

In these commercials, the can of food is able to move on its own as if it is alive. The way it exits a location is by simply rolling off camera. For the ad, I think it would be interesting to implement both of these details.

Here is my quick sketched storyboard of my idea:

Storyboard Description: The ad would open with the ring sitting on a wooden table. The ring would then move a little, coming alive, and eventually roll off of the side of the table and offscreen. The ring would then fall from above, onto a running treadmill. The ring would then roll on the treadmill as if it were running on it. After a bit, it would stop rolling against the treamill and instead fall back off of it. It would then fall over into a cloth effect symbolizing sleep. After waving through the cloth, it would find itself running over a pulse (this could be shown through any streaming effect that mimics heart beats, or even a CHOPs effect). After that is would wind over to an area where hot and cold temperature swirls circled the ring to show it's temperature tracking use. Lastly, from here, the ring would fly into a hero shot, showing off the materials of the ring. It would then fall from this hero shot and land right back where it started on the desk. The title would then display.

Reference for the opening shot:

Reference for activity shot:

AI Ideation using Google Gemini:

Prompt: Make a shot in a commercial for an oura ring to promote the fact that the ring tracks activity. Have the ring running on a treadmill. No humans to the image.

Reference for sleep tracking:

References from Oura Ring:

AI Ideation using Google Gemini:

Prompt: Make a shot in a commercial of an oura ring in bed sheets to promote the fact that the ring tracks sleep. No humans to the image.

Reference for heartrate tracking:

AI Ideation using Google Gemini:

Make a shot in a commercial for an oura ring to promote the fact that the ring tracks heartbeat. No humans to the image.

Reference for temperature tracking:

AI Ideation using Google Gemini:

Prompt: Create an ad showing a oura rings track body temperature by visually showing hot and cold rays

References for the temperature waves from pinterest.com:

Conversation with how to visually represent temperature with ChatGPT:

https://chatgpt.com/share/695f3d0e-f49c-8002-9e47-3910c750b5b7

1/6/2026

Today was the first day of the collaboration class between SCAD and New York! The professors went over general guidelines for the class, and they assigned us into our groups for the quarter. My group consists of myself, Max Jokinen, Noelle Robertson, Wren Pellant, and Cae Parkhill. On this team: Max, Cae and I are on the FX team, Noelle is the doing lookdev for the project, and Wren is our compositor. One interesting requirement for the class is that we each have to incorporate the use of AI during the ideation process. This will be to help us get used to using AI tools in a professional setting to mimic how the industry is currently changing and adapting.

Ideation:

The prompt for this quarter's collaboration was High Technology. In a brainstorming circle, my group and I tossed around ideas about various technology. At first I suggested doing PC accessories such as fans and RGB components, but we decided against that due to the complexities of modeling a PC. Then Cae suggested doing technology accessories like rings or glasses. This is when I piped up about a product I've personally been interested in recently: Oura Rings. The group overall was very interested in this idea and especially there new ceramic colors. We are thinking of having having different settings, effects, or backgrounds for each color similarly to this Oura Ring ad from Instagram: