Ogilvy Singapore and Mill+ spread royalty in an animated tvc for Comfort’s Blossom
Ogilvy Singapore and the Mill+ team have once again joined forces to produce a character animation TVC for Comfort’s ‘Blossom’
The spot directed by Mill+ animation director Russell Appleford plays on the theme that royalty is spread by the new Comfort fragrance. The star of the ad, Felicia brings a sunny optimism to the spot by turning everything she touches to red and gold from carpet, to palace, to carriage.
The team carefully crafted each character, with designers and 3D artists working closely with the director throughout the process. This close collaboration enabled the look and feel of each character to be developed and finessed until the very end production phase.
Director Russell Appleford tells us more about how each element was skilfully designed to produce the final look, “the key concept when creating Felicia was to give her a look of grace and royalty, this is reflected in her dress of layered silk that emits a colourful trail of fragrance to form the centre piece of the spot. We also paid particular attention to creating a traditional soldiers uniform complete with thimble helmet and flowing red braid to accompany the horses which had to strike a balance between being decorative, strong and graceful, yet soft enough for the comfort cloth world.”
Using the Palace of Versailles as reference, the animation and design team explored designs to capture the regal grandeur displayed in the spot as well as soften the edges to compliment the Comfort world. The set of carefully crafter characters and environments are complimented by a royal carriage encrusted with jewels and draped with lace, braids, gold stitching and luxurious satin.
Lead 3D artists Sauce Villas commented, “This was an exciting an challenging project for the 3D team to get stuck into. There is an incredible amount of detail in every shot due to the rich variety of characters and transitions each one of them unique in it’s performance and environment. We created customized rigs and costumes to transform every character, using Houdini to create the particle effects and the gold dust that drive the transformations.
A number of particle tests were done in order to recreate the shots of the taxi transforming into a royal carriage and motorbikes into horses. The key challenge was to ensure that the particles matched the timing of the animation and that they fit perfectly within the shape of the models. We developed special controls in those models that allowed us to conform their shapes and silhouettes so we could blend them together over a few frames to create the magical transition.”
Credits – Commissioner/Producer: Karen Leong. Creative Director: Kevin Geeves. Account Director: Rahul Gupta. Design & Animation Studio: Mill+. Director: Russell Appleford. VFX Exec Producer: Graham Pryor. Producer: Gwenn Hardouin. 2D Lead Artists: Greg Spencer. 3D Lead Artists: Sauce Vilas, Michael Greenwood, Hugo Jackson. 2D Artists: Fergal Hendrick, Gianluca Di Marco. 3D Artists: Arthur Larsen, Chris Hutchinson, Ashley Reemul, Alberto Lara, Emanuel Strixner, Jean-Marie Vouillon, Filippo Forno, Yoann Gouraud, Jessica Soderstrom, Dan Moller, Michael Chapman, Adrien Lambert, Giacamo Cavalletti, Gregory Coelho, Lucy Luong, Pete Agg, Quentin Sauvinet, Vasilis Pazionis, Charlotte Akehurst. Art Department: Jimmy Kiddell, Andrew Brooks, Aurelien Ronceray, German Casado.
