Bruce the giraffe rocks out to Whitesnake in this over the top and impossible-to-ignore spot for Australian commercial radio network Triple M created by Melbourne animation/CG/VFX studio Cadre Pictures through local agency Thinkerbell.

Sigi Eimutis, co-founder and senior producer at Cadre Pictures in Richmond, Australia: “We started by researching the various patterns of giraffes and once we got him to a look and proportions we were all pleased with, the next stage involved modifying him with anthropomorphic traits.

“So his mouth, for instance, had to be modified by moving his teeth forward, as a giraffe’s teeth are further back in their head. His dancing style also required minor bone modifications but interestingly, his swinging neck action is based on actual footage captured in the wild.

“Creating the rooms digitally gave us the flexibility to fit the giraffe’s action. Had we relied on a live-action set, we would have been raising the roof or pushing out the walls in post on a shot by shot basis. This way, subtle adjustments could be made quickly and interactively.

“The rooms also needed to appear lived in, so all the digital assets were art directed with just the right amount of wear and tear and arranged accordingly. Creating the right amount of mess was also considered in the overall art direction.

“Once the main pieces were locked in, physics-based particle systems were used to spread books, vinyl, and other smaller items in a realistic way throughout the room.

“We were building and modifying the giraffe and room assets throughout production, and from a technical standpoint, we used our pipeline that allowed parallel workflow that automatically propagated any updated assets through existing shots.

“The giraffe was sculpted in Z-Brush with the fur created using Ornatrix. Extensive work went in to guiding the placement of fur and painting the giraffe patterns. A muscle system was also simulated and we custom-built the giraffe’s rig which allowed for the particular movements expected of an all-singing, all-dancing giraffe.

“The Redshift rendering was done in-house utilizing our purpose-built network render manager, and the individual Open-EXR render passes were also managed by our custom-built software.

“Final Compositing was carried out in Flame with pre-compositing assembled using Fusion. Other software used was 3dsMax, MARI, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Resolve.”
 

Client: SCA
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer: Nikki Clarkson
Head of Triple M Network: Mike Fitzpatrick
Senior National Marketing Manager: Krista-Lee Pope
Marketing Manager Triple M: Daniel “Digs” Schmutter
Senior Media Manager: Jessica Simpson
Senior National Marketing Manager – Production: Erin Donati

Agency: Thinkerbell
Chief Creative Tinker: Jim Ingram
Thinker: Belle Thompson
Chief Thinker: Adam Ferrier
Managing Partner: Margie Reid
Tinker: Elsa Caruso, Tom Vizard
Head of Production: Di Nash

Production: Cadre Pictures
Creative Director: Pat Da Cunha
Technical Director: Ben Bryan
Lighting Lead & Fur FX: Alan Do
Modeling Lead: Eoin Cannon
Animation Lead: Brian Doecke
Lighting: Kevin Russell, Duncan MacDonald, Nathan Juno
Physical FX: Steven Cheah
Concepts: Rhys Griffiths
Flame: Chris Betteridge
Producer: Sigi Eimutis

Music: Whitesnake
Sound: Risk Sound