PERFETTI: VIGORSOL
MPC has created a darkly humorous CG campaign for Vigorsol, the Italian mint brand. Directed by Ben Dawkins for BBH, the piece was produced in collaboration with Stink.
The visually stunning campaign opens with a shot of a beautiful forest where a ferocious fire is consuming everything in its path. Just when it looks like nothing can be done to save the forest, one enterprising chipmunk has an idea. Reaching for his packet of Vigorsol mints, the chipmunk quickly eats one and then, focusing intently, expels air so powerful and cold that the fire is frozen in its tracks and the forest is saved.
Created in 3D, the commercial achieves a painterly, illustrative 2D look which was central to the Director’s concept from the beginning.
“The treatment given to us was a really good reference of how Ben wanted the overall piece to look,” he said. “The challenge for us was how we would recreate this really illustrative 2D look and translate in to a 3d animation”.
The 3D team at MPC started by building the different depths to the film, which were then brought together at the end to create an unusual mix of layers.
“We did lots of tests initially to establish how the final look was going to be achieved,” Jake explains. “We discovered that, if we used after effects plug-ins, such as edge detects, median blurs, and artistic effects to treat 3D passes we could get the illustrative look in the final comp. “We combined this with further 3D passes composited in Shake to build up the look we wanted.”
MPC’s highly skilled matte painters created the backgrounds for the forest in photoshop as 2D paintings in a traditional, old fashioned Disney style. The hero and moving objects in the middle ground were modelled in 3D with specific matte paintings projected back on to texture them. Finally, the foreground was introduced, which was entirely 3D using Maya’s paint effects for trees and branches, and Maya fur for the chipmunk.
In addition to this live action footage was also added to introduce the fire, smoke and water elements.
“We decided to use the rostrum camera at MPC for the water shots where the villagers are carrying buckets of water which is being swilled around,” said Jake.
“We shot the live footage and lit and treated it to give it a cartoon look and feel, to fit in with the rest of the piece.”
Finally, the dramatic explosion from the chipmunk was created using multiple sprite renders made using maya particles alongside some proprietry scripts and rendering techniques.
The ad airs in
Ends
Credits:
Director: Ben Dawkins
Agency: BBH,
Creatives: Verity Fenner and Claudia Southgate.
Agency Producer: Olly Chapman
Production Company: Stink
Production Company Executive Producer: Blake Powell
Production Company Producer: Sophie Kluman
Editor: Alex Holden, MPC
VFX Supervisor: Jake Mengers
Post Producer: Sophie Gunn
3D team: Jorge Montiel, Duncan McWilliam, Andreas Graichen, Will Broadbent, Ali Dixon, Tony Thorne
Matte Painters: Henrik Holmberg, James Bailey, David Swift
Shake compositors: Becky Porter, James Russel, Kim Stevenson
FX Artist: Ashley Tyas