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Focus Group, a new spot for Dodge Trucks created by ad agency BBDO Detroit, directed by Brian Beletic, and with character animation and effects from Framestore NY, takes an oblique approach to establishing the vehicle's substantial character.
As a circular stage revolves, a beautiful woman removes the cover from a jet-black Dodge Caliber, walks to the front of the stage and asks a panel of experts what they think. Their reaction is less than positive. A puffy blue creature removes his orange lollipop to remark that the imposing vehicle makes him feel less than "warm and fuzzy inside," eliciting emphatic agreement from the adorable hedgehog to his right. A flying pink miniature unicorn goes even further, finding the black behemoth "dark and disturbing." A large green monster with a propeller beanie and British accent explains that the SUV is "neither cuddly nor wuddly." Summing up the mood, a big-eyed monkey named Binky explains that the car simply "scares the #@%! out of me." Despite the negative reaction, two ad executives observing the group from behind one-way glass smile and nod approvingly. The Caliber, after all, is intended to be "anything but cute."
"BBDO Detroit came to us because of our proven skills in character animation," explains Satoko Iinume, Producer at Framestore NY. "Luckily for us, a project with these distinctive characters was a dream job for animators. Peter De Seve (Finding Nemo, Ice Age, and more) designed five brilliant, completely original characters, and it was our job to bring them to life. It was a big challenge, but a great deal of fun as well."
Seeking to create a panel to represent a cross-section of all things cute, BBDO wasted no time in partnering up the proven genius of director Beletic with the character animation experience of Framestore NY.
"The collaboration was established from the very beginning of the project," explains Iinuma. "The five characters had to be completely distinct from one another, but still seem like appropriate participants in this panel. Together with Brian and Peter, we began by discussing whether the characters should be like toys that have come alive; like fantastical creatures from another Narnia-like dimension; like cuddly animals or cartoon characters or sports mascots. Peter then did the initial character design, and we had to think about what voices each would have, what their best looks would be and, of course, what would be possible from a visual effects point of view."
Establishing five distinct personalities in just thirty seconds is not as easy as it may sound, even if they are all cute little characters. Using Autodesk Maya for 3D, Apple Shake for compositing and a variety of proprietary plug-ins developed by the company's brilliant technical teams, Framestore NY created a group of characters who are at once familiar, entirely new and utterly memorable.
"Our two biggest hurdles were creating five fully expressive, talking characters, and having to cover all of them with realistic fur or feathers, so pretty much the entire job!" jokes David Hulin, Head of CG and VFX Supervisor for the spot, Framestore NY. "Even though each character has one line to deliver they all need to have a full range of facial expressions and mouth shapes for their performance. We developed tools that allowed us to transfer animation onto the characters without having to spend a month on each character's setup, thus allowing us to meet the quick turnaround deadline of eight weeks. Freeing more time during the initial part of the process gave us more time to animate the characters and give each of them the personality we wanted to, to help make them cute and alluring to the viewer"
The fur and feathers was a combination of Maya fur and software developed in house. "The CG team did a great job finessing technically very challenging characters all with dynamic fur, hair or feathers," explains Hulin. "It was a real marriage of creative talent and technical ability to produce something with unusually high production values for a commercial"
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