The Hershey Company has launched f a new advertising campaign, "Pure Hershey's," a pair of broadcast spots that bring Hershey's milk chocolate to life in real-life scenes of happiness and togetherness.

Hershey's partnered with advertising agency Arnold New York and award-winning Aardman Animations, the creators of the Oscar-winning WALLACE & GROMIT series, and to create and develop the spots. The spots harness Aardman's 3D animation talents showcasing real-life vignettes that come alive from molten Hershey's chocolate.

The "Pure Hershey's" campaign answers the question "What makes a Hershey's Bar pure?" by inviting viewers into the delightful world inside a Hershey's Bar.

"The concept for 'Pure Hershey's' was unique and exciting," said Aardman director Bobby Proctor. "We utilized the popular 1982 song I MELT WITH YOU, by Modern English and paired it with nostalgic, emotional scenarios that would begin and end with the Hershey's bar melting and reforming. The scenes convey the feelings of happiness and simplicity that one might have while eating Hershey's chocolate."

Having determined the story and character designs, Aardman set about the creation of 3D characters, sets, and props, while their technical directors developed proprietary software that would eventually enable a fully chocolate world. With the resulting particle systems, the animation group could seamlessly join multiple surfaces into one, and new surface shaders accurately mimicked the surface properties of real chocolate. Not blessed with the luxury of time, all the proprietary software was written, tested, and implemented during the course of the job.

When the models were complete, they were rigged to enable the animators to create character performances. It was important that everything showed realistic, smooth flow, so even the landscapes had animation controls to enhance the visual appeal. Aardman also had two key character animators join a team of effects animators to create secondary drips, blobs, ripples, and splashes to accentuate the authenticity. The company shot real molten chocolate for reference, and created specific CG tests to ascertain the correct levels of shininess, reflectivity, depth, color, highlights, and shadows.

Creating a "believable" environment composed entirely of chocolate is one thing, but creating realistic chocolate characters is quite another. For the mood to be captured and the spots to work, the characters needed to be able to express very light, very subtle emotions through delicate facial movements and realistic body gestures. That can be tough when they are made out of brown chocolate. The fact that these spots are intended for cinema release also meant they had to be rendered at very high resolution, so there was no room for errors.

Credits:

Titles: SWING AND DRIVE (:30) and FATHER AND SON (:15)

Client: Hershey

Agency: Arnold New York
Agency Producer: Anthony Migliaccio and Pete Scudese
Creative Directors: Ken Ferris and Liz Donnelly
Director: Bobby Proctor
Producer: Jason Fletcher-Bartholomew
Production Assistant: Holly Marlow

CG:

Modelers: Mikey Ford, Andy Proctor and Olly Davis
Riggers: Victor Vinyals, Steve Roberts
Animators: Scott Pleydell-Pearce, Adam Cootes, Olly Davis, John Ogden, Seamus Malone and Tom Lord
Lighters: Darren Dubicki, Tessa Mapp, Andy Lavery
Technical Directors: Tom Downes, Phillip Child, Ben Toogood, Volker Heisterberg and Tim Brade
Compositors: Jim Lewis and Bram Ttwheam

Post Production:
Scramble (London)

Technologies used:
Intel-based PC workstations and render boxes running Windows XP. Autodesk Maya 8.5.
Adobe Photoshop CS.
Eyeon Fusion. Adobe After Effects Apple Shake Apple Final Cut Pro