Guinness Ad "Dreamer" - Jonathan Glazer

Guinness Ad "Dreamer"

AGENCY AMV BBDO
PRODUCTION COMPANY Academy Productions
DIRECTOR Jonathan Glazer

VFX Framestore

Framestore is very pleased to announce completion of work on Dreamer, the new Guinness commercial. The 60 second spot, which aired for the first time on 6th April on SKY, and on terrestrial TV on 7th April, is the latest collaboration between Framestore, director Jonathan Glazer and agency AMV BBDO. The last such joining of forces produced Surfer (first aired almost exactly two years ago in March 1999) which went on to win numerous awards as well as being voted the nation's favourite TV commercial ever.
 
Once more, Framestore have come up with something a little bit special to help Guinness get their message across, and once more this involves some extraordinary animals. No less ambitious than the Surfer horses, Dreamer features the debut of some notable new virtual actors in the form of a bar full of Guinness quaffing squirrels. But whereas the horses were largely real creatures skillfully blended into live footage, the squirrels are entirely the product of Framestore's 3D animation team.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL
Leading the project team was Framestore's recently appointed Head of Creature Animation, Sally Goldberg. "From the outset Jonathan (Glazer) wanted the squirrels to be realistic actors working within the (albeit dreamlike) action of the whole piece," she recalls, "They were not meant to be 'cartoon' creatures." To this end an ambitious and intensive programme of Research and Development commenced. This included intensive scrutiny of the furry rodents, up to and including the introduction of three live specimens to the Framestore boardroom. Goldberg additionally brought to bear a number of years' experience in the animation of a variety of animal and human elements.
 
Three major considerations in designing and animating such creatures are their fur, the lighting, and the interaction between these two elements. Chiefly responsible for the development of this area was Oliver James. "I quickly realised that the existing solutions did not have the flexibility we needed," he says. James embarked on a process of "heavy modification" applied to Maya's fur plug-in along with Pixar's 'Mtor' fur. James developed what is essentially an entirely new set of software tools for the creation and lighting of fur. The results are that the squirrels sport an astonishingly realistic fur coat, with a level of subtlety, shading and detail rarely if ever achieved before in commercial work.

THE FULL TREATMENT
But if the squirrels are the major element in Framestore's work on Dreamer, they are far from being the only one. Framestore's artists and operators from across the board contributed their skills, and freelance Inferno Artist Steve McGee helped bring it all together. As Fiona Chilton, Effects Producer at Framestore, puts it, "By the end of the project we will have scanned, conformed and graded the whole piece, recording the final commercial back to film. In addition, we composited the shots of the horse and the dogs, removed rigs and did the crowd replication near the end of the spot. Not bad for 16 weeks work."
 
Never a company to look to its laurels, Framestore has a number of further beastly surprises in store for the coming months. But now, as computer creatures become ever more sophisticated, Framestore would like to offer a raised glass and a twitch of the tail to the wit and vision of the Guinness commercials that help them on their way.

Info from FRAMESTORE - Commercials New York website
http://www.framestore.com/#/Commercia...