SAINSBURYS: THE GREATEST GIFT
"The Greatest gift" was the festive commercial for Sainsbury's supermarket in 2016. Presented as a 3 minute stop frame animation, the piece was produced by Passion pictures, starring a cast of puppets created by Mackinnon and Saunders.
Client
Sainsbury’s
Agency
AMVBBDO/Passion Pictures
Role
CG Modelling, Technical Modelling, ZBrush Sculpting, Texturing
Date
April 2016 – September 2016
In 2016, SouthernGFX had the pleasure of working for London based Passion Pictures on Sainsbury’s Christmas commercial. We worked along side world renowned Puppet makers Mackinnon and Saunders to provide face replacement technical modelling using ZBrush and Maya.
Directed by Academy Award and BAFTA nominee Sam Fell for Passion Pictures Animation this groundbreaking film combines brand new techniques and traditional stop motion to create a stunning and uplifting animation.
Our involvement in the project began with the creation of the first character, Dave. We were provided with scans of a Plasticine maquette, made by Mackinnon and Saunders which was then taken into ZBrush and re-built with animation safe topology.
These Sculpts were then split into two parts. The front of the face was split off, with seams following the hairline and sweeping in underneath the jaw. Because of this, they were easier to hide which reduces the amount of clean-up in post production.
Internally, we designed a system to contain internal face mechanics. This includes insets to contain “rare earth” magnets, allowing for faces to be easily removed and swapped out in order to animate facial expressions along with support structures to contain the eye and neck mechanics.
The finished characters were shipped down to Passion Pictures in London where the final stop motion animation was produced.
Alongside 3D modelling and sculpting, 3D printing was a big part of our work on “The Greatest Gift”. Throughout the design process, we used a range of 3D printers to produce 3D prints for a range of purposes.
Each puppet created by Mackinnon and Saunders is based around an internal mechanical armature which contains machined parts which are unique to each puppet. In particular, there is metal block situated inside the head which is locked in place by screws from outside the head, usually hidden underneath the hair piece.
Due to these parts having specific dimensions, we were required to be accurate down to the micron when 3D modelling the internals for the head. Using on-site 3D printers to produce fitment tests ensured that the pieces fit exactly, before sending models off for final prints using full colour resin.
Once every character had a split face, with internal mechanics, the technical models were then rigged by a CG artist at Passion Pictures. To animate the faces on the puppet, each digital face was animated in 3D, with the resulting sequence exported to individual facial expressions which were then 3D printed as a series of interchangeable faces.
The final face pieces were printed on a Stratasys J750 full colour resin 3D printer. This meant that we could recieve fully coloured 3D prints straight from the printing bed, using the 3D models texture map. This eliminated the time it would take to paint each of the thousands of individual faces by hand.
Sainsbury's: "The Greatest Gift" - Christmas Advert 2016
The making of Sainsbury's: "The Greatest Gift" - Christmas Advert 2016