CGSociety Film :: Animal Logic Harmony in Motion
Animal Logic PR, 19 August 2005
Animal Logic has worked with M+C Saatchi Sydney, Filmgraphics, and director Phil Meatchem to create a new television commercial for Optus. The 60 second Brand TVC combines seamless 3D animation with a great music track to animate the Optus animals into a new musical life.
The commercial titled ‘Harmony’ is part of the new Optus’ advertising campaign and features the exotic animals that have become recognizable as the core of the company’s visual branding, singing Bing Crosby’s 1945 hit song “Give Me the Simple Life“. The track has been remastered and features the vocal talents of Australian artists Kate Ceberano, Tammin Sursock, Human Nature, Doug Parkinson, Lee Kernaghan, Tex Perkins and James Morrison on the trumpet.
Animal Logic has worked with M+C Saatchi Sydney, Filmgraphics, and director Phil Meatchem to create a new television commercial for Optus. The 60 second Brand TVC combines seamless 3D animation with a great music track to animate the Optus animals into a new musical life.
The commercial titled ‘Harmony’ is part of the new Optus’ advertising campaign and features the exotic animals that have become recognizable as the core of the company’s visual branding, singing Bing Crosby’s 1945 hit song “Give Me the Simple Life“. The track has been remastered and features the vocal talents of Australian artists Kate Ceberano, Tammin Sursock, Human Nature, Doug Parkinson, Lee Kernaghan, Tex Perkins and James Morrison on the trumpet.
With the stills gathered prior to the shoot, the team in Sydney could set to work on turning the animals into singing stars by building 3D muzzles to replace their real muzzles and creating fur simulations. “Each animal muzzle had to be modeled and textured with its specific fur type. We used our proprietary fur software that we have been developing for a number of years. Rendering of fur and feathers can be problematic due to the huge amount of geometry required. Our system works closely with renderman and uses procedural techniques to only generate the required geometry at render time so it proved really efficient for a project of this scale,“ said Producer Nerissa Kavanagh.
To animate the faces, each live action shot was tracked in 3D and the respective muzzles that included teeth, gums and tongue were placed over the footage of the real animals. The 3D heads and mouths were then animated in sync with the audio track.
The 3D muzzles were integrated with the live action material in Flame with Leoni Willis working as Lead Compositor, “The most difficult shots to integrate a 3D muzzle with the live action material were the zebra and lion shots. The Zebra stripes move and animate as the jaw moves so making the join perfect between the live action zebra and the 3D zebra muzzle was a very time consuming and difficult task for us“ said Willis.
The 2D team spent many hours separating the elements so that 3D camera moves could be applied to the scenes. To create a magical almost garden feel to the spot many layers of plants and foliage where added to each scene. Matte paintings were also added where required and skies where replaced throughout.
“The success of this commercial lies in the belief of the audience that these animals are really singing, so for us that means perfect integration between the live action animals and the CG muzzles. Needless to say, Leoni and her team spent huge amounts of time getting this to look perfect’“ said Kavanagh.
CREDITS: Client: Optus Agency: M&C Saatchi, Sydney Agency Producer: Loren August Creative Directors: Tom McFarlane & Ben Welsh Art Director: Ant Larcombe Copywriter: Paul Dunne Prod Co: Filmgraphics Director: Phil Meatchem Prod Co-producer: Jo Jordan
Animal Logic team: Executive Producer: Jacqui Newman Producer: Nerissa Kavanagh Lead Compositor: Leoni Willis Compositor: Nicholas Ponzoni Assistant Compositor: Mark Robinson 3D Team leader: Nathan Mitchell
3D team:
Michael Mellor - Animation Lead
Andrew Lodge - Lighting Lead
Clinton Downs – Technical Director
Ian Watson
Stefan Litterini
Ben Falcone
Steve Beck
Paul Braddock
Brett Margules
Tom Bardwell
Gerrard Southam
Bhakar James
Sandy Sutherland
Phil Wittmer
Matte Painting Artist: Ben Walsh
Shoot Supervisor: Jane Milledge
Concept Artist: Evan Shipard
