Klondike Bear CG Commercials:
"RUNNERS"
The Klondike Ice Cream company
recently joined forces with Bent
Image Lab, in Portland Oregon to create a new spokesperson (spokes
bear?)
for their new 98% Fat Free Ice Cream Bars. Here is the result.
New Production Team:
The
newly formed CG team was headed by veteran Director David Daniels, who
had also directed a number of the famous M&M's commercials back
when the characters
were done in Lightwave 3D, at Will Vinton Studios.
My
main responsibility was the creation and application of the CG fur
(using Sasquatch),
modeling and Element breakdown for compositing, but during the nearly 4
months of my tour at Bent, I got to do a bit of everything.
During the design phase for the
bear, I added a nose from one of my canine
models & the teeth from my TiGorilla
Model to help speed up production. Those teeth were
extensively
reshaped to make them much less scary looking.
I modeled and textured the wallet
& made the holes in the original CG version of the ice cream
bar. And I tweaked the animation on the wallet shot and got to
key frame the final
scene animation for "Runners",
where the bear gets to wiggle his toes as he lustfully anticipates the
joys of his 98% Fat Free Klondike Bar.
FYI:
'Jill' is played by the
warm & charming Madaline Smith & the voice of
'Slim-A-Bear' is performed by Jim Connor. And the in-house code
name for the final version of the bear's 3D geometry was 'Andy'.
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Slim's ID for the wallet
shot in "Runners",
was modified from
my own (notice we have the same birth date). His address of
course, is
where Klondike Ice Cream's HQ
is located. Click to view!
The ID was later changed
to read "North Pole" instead of
"California",
but the text is almost unnoticeable during the animation due to motion blur.
But it does what it needs to: make the wallet feel used as if it were
owned by a real person.
Prototypes: There were
about 21 different clay sculptures and 9 CG versions of the bear before
a final look was selected for the new digital mascot. That's a
lot of bears and test renders !!!
The coolest thing about
CG,
is you can get away with things you just can't in real life...
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"Slim-A-Ball"
The first commercial suffered from a
number of technical issues. Some of them easily solvable, some of
them not so easily dealt with... With the idea that we could do a
lot better, we learned from some of our mistakes, pressed forward and
came up with some new methods to get around these production issues.
Compositing Fur Elements:
One of the biggest technical problems for "Slim-A-Ball",
was how to composite the scarf
OVER the fur, yet keep from having to do a lot of manual roto work with
splines, on every frame where he self intersects. Fur typically
creates a very irregular, natural looking edge when you see it, and it
just didn't look right when it was cut into by hand-- it was just too
perfect.
After brainstorming late one night, one of the techniques that
Christian Smith and I came up with, was knocking holes into the Alpha
Channel of the body's RGB Fur Pass with Alpha Matte Objects. This
way, the Compositor could use the same RGB elements of the scarf either
under the intersection areas, or on top if a soft, overlapping edge was
desired. The geometry of the body was rendered using Area
Lights, with the Fur Pass later applied on top of the naked bear.
To help the scarf look more 'real' on close ups, barely visible red
fibers were grown from the cloth to simulate the organic softness of
yarn. It worked quite well, although it did take more time to
process. BTW, the original texture of the scarf came from a
sweater owned by Pascal
Champion. Even in OpenGL, it looked quite convincing.
Exercise Ball Effector Rig for 'Andy':
I created a simple deformation Rig for the
exercise ball, using Polk's Poke Plugin and Lightwave's Follower,
which
allowed the ball to rotate while still keeping the 3 effector nulls
horizontal as it rolled. It was effective at simulating 'Slim's'
weight on the object and was very quick to set up and animate.
The top effector simulated weight pressing down where the bear
was. The middle effector was used to maintain volume, and the
bottom one was used to fake interaction with the floor.
Overall, "Slim-A-Ball"
looks far better than the first spot, thanks to teamwork and the desire
to continually improve upon what was done before. |
Slim's IK Tongue Rig: Fun, yet creepy
because of
the
organic way it could be moved. It's basically
controlled by
3 nulls.
The first is the root of the
assembly, and
the other
two bias the IK chain
so you
can get it to curve and flex organically.
Slim's dopey
costume acted as a place holder for
where the CG bear was composited into frame.
Slim's
Exercise Ball Rig: Using Polk's Poke Plugin.
It simulated the bear's weight pressing down on the
object. Custom OpenGL objects helped show the radius of the
effectors influence.
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| Here
are some stills from "Slim-A-Ball"
that better showcase the detail of the bear and his pelt:
   
If you're interested in what the last shot looked like
before it was textured and lit, click here for the PREVIEW ANIMATION!
The FINAL ANIMATION
for this spot can be viewed HERE!
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"Treadmills"
This was actually the **FIRST**
Klondike Bear Commercial to be story boarded, but the **LAST** to
actually be completed. I think it's also by far the funniest of
all the prior spots, making it especially disappointing when
the price of Milk kept this clever and original work from being
broadcast...
Yes,
milk. Apparently ad budgets for Ice Cream Companies are tied to
it, like a circulatory system is tied to blood; so when people turned
to comfort foods with milk in them & the price shot way up;
there was no budget left to air this spot after it was finished.
After nearly 4 months of Klondike production, my time at Bent
Image Labs was nearing its end. My contract was almost up and it
was time for me to head back to LA. But before I packed up the
Beetle and left, I got to
animate a couple of shots on this piece before saying "Good-bye" to
Portland
Oregon, and the great people at Bent.
Nothing is Written in Stone, Until You
Deliver:
Of course, if you've worked in CG, you know nothing is
set in
stone until delivery (or sometimes, even after), so my work was
modified a bit in my absence. The top two pics on the
right are from shots I originally animated, but the Bear's Shudder
Scene was changed quite a bit from what I recall...
Great Job Guys!
The final lighting was done by Galen Beals, since I had to leave before
the spot delivered; I'm very impressed with how well it came off!
Nice rim lighting on the fur guys, it looks great!
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Looking at the
Human Zoo...
Modified "Shudder"
View the Final
Commercial !
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CREW LIST
FOR TEAM
KLONDIKE
Flame: Mike
Quinn
Editing: Steve Miller
Producer: Ray Di Carlo
After Effects: Steve Balzer
Live
Action Director: Robin Willis
Animation Supervisor: Jeffrey Bost
Supervising Director: David Daniels
Director of Photography: Mark
Eifert
Asset Manager / Tracking TD: John RA
Benson
Animation / Modeling / Illustration: Pascal Champion
Lighting / Modeling / Element Breakdown: Christian Smith
Fur FX / Modeling / Animation /
Element Breakdown: Rowsby
Animation / Modeling / Lighting /
Element Breakdown: Galen Beals
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