Working with MullenLowe London, the Outpost VFX team developed the characters, storyboarded the project, shot live-action sequences featuring Unilever’s product, and also implemented cross functionality between Redshift and Golaem Crowd, for the 30-second CG commercial.
BOURNEMOUTH, UK -- Outpost VFX has delivered the latest broadcast commercial for Unilever brand Domestos. Working with MullenLowe London, Outpost VFX created the 30-second, CG-heavy commercial for international broadcast, employing its proven creature-creation pipeline.
The Outpost VFX team has also announced the implementation of cross functionality between Redshift and Golaem Crowd to achieve full-CG crowd render times of under an hour per frame, for the first time.
A wide array of CG techniques and disciplines were employed to achieve the end result: all of the characters in the commercial are fully CG and were sculpted, textured and animated by Outpost. Numerous particle and lighting effects were provided by the 2D team to add an extra veneer, and the commercial culminates in an intricate fluid simulation.
The team also developed the individual germ characters in-house, using digital and traditional illustration techniques, storyboarded the project and even shot live-action sequences featuring Unilever’s product.
Outpost’s founder Duncan McWilliam directed the commercial, overseeing the project, “Domestos was our first foray into what I would call large-scale animated commercial work that we’ve looked forward to getting into for a long time,” said McWilliam. “We took the script from bare bones, wrote the treatment, in-house direction -- end-to-end production company level service. It’s our first full-CG project where we’ve had a lot of creatures, crowd work and fluid simulation together, so that was all three big skill sectors that we wanted to show off, and it’s a big brand as well.”
Outpost VFX looks to hone its crowd pipeline in the coming months. McWilliam explained: “We’re going to finish the aforementioned this year, where we’ve got a crowd of 35,000 people in a football stadium dispersing with proper programming and AI, not just standard crowds. Our render times for that are significantly less again because we’ve managed to streamline the pipeline and we look now to start specializing in crowd for high-end TV where we can take the crowd pipeline we’ve developed for film, streamlined for short-delivery commercials work.
Outpost VFX is a finalist at the AEAF Awards in Sydney, Australia for their work on the Domestos campaign.
Source: Outpost VFX
