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Creature crackers
Aardman Animations’ turned its talents on US snack brand Golafish Crackers to create a series of TV spots aiming to teach kids to think positively.
Pepperidge Farm wanted the latest series of ads Goldfish brand of crackers to deliver a ‘positive thinking’ message to children. The company drafted in Bristol-based Aardman Animations-the digital arm of the studio responsible for the award-winning Wallace and Gromit movies, Chicken Run, and the Oscar-winning Creature Comforts shorts-to develop and animate the TV spots.
The Goldfish brand team had already succeeded in creating a deeper relationship with consumers by creating a characrer-Finn the Goldfish-to relaunch the brand.
The latest Goldfish campaign builds on this to explore the friendship and adventures of Finn and three new pals, Gilbert, Brooke, and X-treme. The four new spots are designed to show the power of positive thinking in dealing with everyday situations.
Aardman’s director of the ads, Stefan Marjoram, says:”One great thing about this job was that the agency and client had put a huge amount of work into producing a guide to the Goldfish world.
“There were some character designs, too, which we used as a starting point, but they changed quite a bit as we tried to get the right balance of character and product accuracy.”
In terms of designing and developing the four characters-both in terms of look-&-feel and inspiration-Aardman built rough models in Maya very early on. “We thought it was impotant to give the agency a good idea of how the designs would work in three dimensions,” says Marjoram. “Sometimes a design can work great as a sketch but not so well as a model.
“We also spent quite a bit of time working on the textures, trying to get ‘taste appeal’. They had to appear realistic and tasty, and fit well with the rest of the environment.
“Each time we finished building a character we did an animation test. This gave us a good idea of the character’s personality and was useful to us as a rigging test.”
Some of Aardman’s considerations were cultural, as well as technical, such as the design of the bedroom sequences. According to Marjoram, there are subtle differences between English and American bedrooms. “We were sent a huge pile of American decorating books, and the creatives from the agency sent us photos of their children’s bedrooms,” he says.
Aardman came up with an ingenious solution to the issue of lighting the bedroom scene. “We wanted the spot to feel quite bright, even though most of the action took place under the bed,” says Marjoram. “So we went for an early evening lighting scheme with a low sun that would get light to areas that would normally be in shadow.”
The commercial was lit by Aardman CGL senior lighter Andy Procter, whose aim was to create a sense of warmth, keep the palette colourful, and to avoid shadowy areas. The under-bed sepuence made these goals tricky to achieve. Procter says: “Rather than using light and dark to create contrast and depth, we used colour contrast instead, with warm, rosy key lighting and cooler shadow areas.”
Procter says specific processes were employed to create the required theatricality. “A beauty pass of the set was rendered that had all the texture and surface detail, plus basic lighting. Then an ambient occlusion pass was used to add extra shading and contact shadows. A light/shadow colour pass was added, that tinted the key lit areas with warm tones and the shadow areas with cool tones.
“A B&W key light pass added a sense of believability to the renders, and a second pass boosted lit areas and flare highlights, adding an airy, summer’s evening feel to the scenes.”
Plenty more fish
Aardman worked on the animation of the characters as well as the design. Character modeller and rigger Steve Roberts tackled the central character, Finn. “Finn was modelled initially from a NURBS sphere, with one pole inside the mouth and the other at the tail,” he says. “This was to ensure a good starting point for the even distribution of detail around the mouth. This model was then converted to polygons, with extra detail added.
“In rigging the character, the number of bones were kept to a minimum. The Finn model served as a template for subsequent fish meshes,” he adds.
Roberts reveals that Maya was used for the bulk of the work, with Photoshop used for texturing and After Effects for compositing.
He adds: “Once a fish had been built and rigged it was passed on to Adam Cootes, who would do an animation test. The aim of this was to set the style for his animation and to check that it was capable of doing all the actions he’d have to perform in the spot.”
A crucial area for the animators was the crackers themselves. “The different cracker textures went through quite a strict client-approval process,” says Roberts. “It was very important to them that the crackers were faithful to the actual product, but we had to make sure that they were clearly readable in a busy scene and easily distinguishable.”
Aardman produced four commercials and six cutdowns and variations in four months. “The team did a really excellent job,” says Marjoram. “They were excited about the project and I think it shows in their work. The rewarding part is it all went so smoothly and we came out of it with a very happy client.”
