AARDMAN SPOT SHOWS CG CAPABILITIES
February 9, 2007

AARDMAN SPOT SHOWS CG CAPABILITIES

Conceived by DDB Worldwide, San Francisco, the live action commercial has an adventure storyline in which Spoony, a lonely spoon in a diner, goes on a journey to join a pack of chocolate pudding cups in a suburban family's home.

The spot includes 19 separate shots in 30 seconds involving a range of indoor and outdoor lighting conditions. On the set, Aardman created a pose-able maquette of the Spoony character, which proved invaluable for composing shots, working out the action, and for lighting reference.

Live action was shot on 35mm film in Capetown, South Africa by Moonlighting. All CG was created using Autodesk Maya 7. Texturing of Spoony was accomplished using Adobe Photoshop and Right Hemisphere's Deep Paint 3D. After Effects was used for compositing. Applications ran on off-the-shelf PCs and rendering was handled by a custom-built 100-plus CPU renderfarm with a centralized server.

Scott Pleydell-Pearce directed live action and animation.  John Woolley served as producer.