Case Study
Carbon
- Executive Creative Director Liam Chapple
- Executive Producer Derek Goldsmith
- Producer Jenna Gabriel
- VFX Supervisor Tim Little
- 3D Animator Doug Litos
- 3D Animator Matt Parent
- 3D Animator Nick Johnnides
- 3D Artist Alex Rumsa
- 3D Artist Sean Skube
- 3D Artist Quin Barclay
- 3D Artist Mirelle Underwood
- 3D Artist Ryan Hussain
- 3D Artist Tim Little
- Compositor Paulo Dias
- Compositor Jenn Howard
- Compositor Danny Noren
- Compositor Adam Thompson
- Compositor Tim Little
- Flame Artist Michael Anderson
- Editor Tim Little
External
- Client General Mills
- Agency Martin Williams
- Producer Liz Wingate
- Copywriter Molly Thomson
- Head of Production Freddie Richards
- Account Supervisor RaeAnne Gleason
- Group Creative Director Matt Pruet
- 2D Character Animation Calabash
Our partnership with Martin Williams and General Mills began with the building of our style frames in 3D for the pitch process. We built our 3D scenes and Nuke composites using our in-house Carbon studio pipeline, which allowed us to create fun and funky frames and motion tests that the agency immediately loved.
For the :15, we slid straight into production next, bypassing the usual stages of storyboarding and previz; we had camera and framing that worked well and our style frames already had an agency approved look. This trickled down to the :06, where we skipped look dev, but implemented some storyboarding to find the best choreography for the spot. We could then focus our attention on elevating the content and adding new features rather than starting from the ground up.
It’s important to represent the product as accurately as possible, so we started by photoscanning pieces of each cereal with the aims of achieving delicious hyperrealism. We mixed the photoscans with added textures, which resulted in an enhanced silhouette for the product.
For both the :15 and :06 spots we created simulations of the cereal being shot out of the boxes. The :06 was simulated 40 times slower than real time in order to achieve an ultra slo-mo feel, encouraging viewers to take in all the details and intricacies in the cereal chaos!
It was important to balance lighting between each shot, as they featured the product’s cereal and iconic boxes in front of flat backgrounds reminiscent of each box’s historic colors. We finessed the highlights and shadows to accent the product’s shape and separated the boxes from the environment, all while showing off the attractive features, like texture and color, up close.
In order to amplify the tastiness of the cereal, we used relighting in Nuke to add selective sheen and detail to individual cereal pieces as needed. The 3D team put out beautiful renders and quickly got the extra passes that comp needed to push each shot the rest of the way.
Our collaboration with Calabash studios, who made the traditional 2D character animations, gave us the freedom to continue playing with timing and framing without any work wasted on either side.
