SAINSBURYS: THE GREATEST GIFT
"The Greatest gift" was the festive commercial for Sainsbury's supermarket in 2016. Presented as a 3 minute stop frame animation, the piece was produced by Passion pictures, starring a cast of puppets created by Mackinnon and Saunders.
Client
Sainsbury’s
Agency
AMVBBDO/Passion Pictures
Role
CG Modelling, Technical Modelling, ZBrush Sculpting, Texturing
Date
April 2016 – September 2016
ScreenScene Post production house in Dublin hired us to help on a few shots that needed ZBrush sculpting on scanned 3D heads. The shots required face replacement VFX. The two actors in question have been cast and the casts were sent to a traditional sculptor to add the necessary rotting and detailed skin work. There heads were scanned using Agisoft and a single DSLR. TO make sure the scans were of the highest quality we sprayed them Matte grey and gave them a dusting of Matte white. This removed any reflection but really made the surface detail pop. We took these scans into ZBrush and decimated them down to a usable level. Then we used Maya to retopologize them and Headus UV layout to give them a set of UV co-ordiates. We then took than new mesh back into ZBrush and projected the high resolution detail back on. As there was no skin texture to capture we had to paint al the texture by hand. All of the rigging, compositing, and animation was done by the talented team at ScreenScene.
Alongside 3D modelling and sculpting, 3D printing was a big part of our work on “The Greatest Gift”. Throughout the design process, we used a range of 3D printers to produce 3D prints for a range of purposes.
Each puppet created by Mackinnon and Saunders is based around an internal mechanical armature which contains machined parts which are unique to each puppet. In particular, there is metal block situated inside the head which is locked in place by screws from outside the head, usually hidden underneath the hair piece.
Due to these parts having specific dimensions, we were required to be accurate down to the micron when 3D modelling the internals for the head. Using on-site 3D printers to produce fitment tests ensured that the pieces fit exactly, before sending models off for final prints using full colour resin.
Once every character had a split face, with internal mechanics, the technical models were then rigged by a CG artist at Passion Pictures. To animate the faces on the puppet, each digital face was animated in 3D, with the resulting sequence exported to individual facial expressions which were then 3D printed as a series of interchangeable faces.
Sainsbury's: "The Greatest Gift" - Christmas Advert 2016
The making of Sainsbury's: "The Greatest Gift" - Christmas Advert 2016