SONOS Case Study | My Site 1

SONOS - Case Study

Credits

Designers & Animators:
Enrique Santa Maria & Andrew Han
Sound Designer: Kelly Warner

Models:

FUTURE DELUXE: SONOS ERA 100

Role

Design
Animation

Create a captivating product launch campaign (:10 - :15 sec) for Sonos that showcases the power, clarity, and emotional impact of sound.

This campaign should demonstrate your ability to creatively visualize sound in a way that feels cinematic, immersive, and emotionally resonant. Turning invisible energy into a stunning visual narrative.

Produce a launch film that doesn't show the product but makes the audience feel the sound. Your piece should merge technical storytelling with sensory driven visuals portraying the speaker as more than a device; it's an experience.

Tools

Houdini
Redshift
After Effects

Year

2025

Tutorial Guidance

Nick Medukha

BEHIND THE SCENES

Here's a look behind the storyboards and animatic process

STORYBOARDS

CREATING EACH INDIVIDUAL SOURCE

As you can see, creating the explosion required building separate sources for each component — the spikes, small burst, main burst, trails, and shockwave. Each element added another layer of realism to help sell the final effect.

The next step in my process was creating the trails to enhance the sense of motion and impact.

ANIMATIC

FLIPBOOK SIMS

As I learned throughout this project, creating a realistic explosion involves many layers working together to make it feel believable. Here’s a look at the process I used to bring it to life.

SIM ITERATIONS AND EXPLORATIONS

TAKEAWAYS SO FAR

I have learned so much just iterating. It's one thing to follow the tutorials, but when you want to exceed that and create things uniquely for you, you can only learn from trial and error

FINAL POSSIBLE SHOTS FOR RENDER

NEXT STEPS

Now that I had experimented enough I was ready to set up the animatic using the final flipbook renders I created

FLIPBOOK ANIMATIC

CREATING EACH INDIVIDUAL SOURCE

The next step in my process was creating the trails to enhance the sense of motion and impact.

CREATING THE TRAILS

EXPLOSION WITH COMBINED ELEMENTS

FLIPBOOK RENDER TEST

ADDING COLLISION PHYSICS TO THE EXPLOSION

CREATING THE COLLISION

Once Andrew finished the building destruction, I took over to merge the explosion and destruction, making both elements collide naturally. The collider helped the explosion feel truly grounded in the scene, adding depth and realism that really brought the sim to life, and honestly, it came out so cool.

Now all that was left was to add the finished explosion into the scene.

PLAYBLAST + FLIPBOOK RENDER OF EXPLOSION IN SCENE