Success Story
The Vanity is a collective of VFX artists, colourists, and motion designers. They were approached by the agency Broken Heart Love Affair as a creative partner for Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s Milk Glass campaign. Initially, they had a rough animatic and the base concept of this anthropomorphic milk glass. There was a specific set of activities that the client wanted to show and since it is essentially a pantomime, the choices for animation of the glass, props, and sound queues all needed to be very deliberate to convey the activity. Since there was an existing animatic they were able to nail down the whole spot pretty quickly, although a lot of time was spent on getting the pacing to feel just right. We spoke with CG Supervisor Josh Clifton about the project.
Once the animation was set, the team at The Vanity could start creating the real star of the piece, milk. One of the hardest parts of a job like this is that you are creating the client’s product. Since they had really liked the clean, minimalist look for the glass and the environment; the big question was how do you keep the milk in the glass as it jumps around and still have it feel natural? In the end the team threw together a quick system that would reduce the intensity of the animation to get the right amount of sloshing. That original animation was then applied to the simulation and you’ve got yourself a dancing milk glass. Well almost. The biggest unknown with this project was the best way to approach the bubbles. Milk has bubbles! How do you keep the bubbles consistent and art directable throughout the entire piece? Short answer, you fake it. They made a couple hero bubble stills as CG assets. These were then comped and tracked on to the top of the glass as needed. Since the bubbles are such an important part of the look of the milk. Having them as a separate element made it much easier to control without the need to go back to CG and re-render entire shots. Now, we have a finished glass of milk.
The entire project ran about 6-7 weeks from start to finish. The goal was really to make the milk itself fun and engaging. Also, to create a realistic representation of the product, both in terms of look and motion. At the end of the day, it can be doing the most detailed beautiful animation you have ever seen but if it doesn’t look and feel like the product then it doesn’t work.
Autodesk Maya was used for animation, layout and rendering. Autodesk Maya is great for doing quick iterations and allows you to get the animation and scenes set up easily. It also made exploring style frames and initial concepts super quick. Autodesk Flame was used for compositing. It would have been a much more involved process of getting the bubbles to work without Autodesk Flame.
"We couldn’t be happier with the final spot. We achieved all of the goals that we had for the project. The most important thing is that the client was very happy with how everything turned out. It is always a bonus to get to work on commercials that are quirky and fun.
CineSys is our main software provider, and all of our main suites are built around hardware that we have purchased from them over the years. They’ve been our Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Flame reseller since day one. We value our partnership with them tremendously. " Josh Clifton, CG Supervisor.
Every project has its challenges, but what made this one unique is that on the surface it seems very simple. It can be a surprising amount of work, planning, and creativity to make something appear as simple and minimalistic. It is also just fun and whimsical, which is always interesting.
Project summary
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