The Mill pulls strings for Brains and Britvic

12th May 2008 - Brains is go!
Brains, the bespectacled egghead of Gerry Anderson’s 1960s puppet classic Thunderbirds, is back on our screens in a new ad for Britvic, performing some pretty amazing dance moves thanks to the hydrating benefits of Drench Water – and with a little help from the Mill.

Says Barnsley: “It became clear to me early on that the best approach for this project was to allow the 3D animation team as much freedom and time as possible to concentrate on modelling, texturing, lighting, and especially animation. This involved convincing everyone to hold off the flame work until reasonably late in the project…

A motion capture stage was set up with a real dancer on the shoot to capture the moves which Ringan envisaged Brains pulling off.

Sindle believes the biggest challenge rested in the animation as; “the movements of a puppet and of a human differ hugely, we needed to achieve the look and weight of a puppet while still keeping the humorous speed and snap of the choreographed dancer”.

The puppet was scanned in order to provide the very best starting point for the model. This was followed by texturing, lighting and rendering, which involved using hair and cloth simulations to add as much reality as possible.

Meanwhile Barnsley set up each shot in Flame so that animation changes could be implemented, quickly and smoothly, even at the 11th hour, but also to a high level of detail and complexity.” This proved invaluable, as most of the scenes were tweaked right up to the deadline, often re-rendered from scratch three or four times. It was no mean feat, given the amount of CG – as many as ten passes – and the length of each shot, up to 1,000 frames at HD.

A third of the scenes were filmed “in camera”, with the puppeteers’ legs, their shadows and the string shadows removed later with the help of a clean plate, which was photo-mapped on to the 3D environment.

“The 3D Brains was scrutinised against the live-action references, and together Barnes and I pushed ourselves to match these as closely as possible,” says Sindle. “I believe this added the extra 15 per cent, which helps the viewer believe that Brains is really there.” The opening shot was perhaps the most tricky, combining live action with 3D arms, re-timed legs and dramatic lighting change, passing from dark to light.
The end result? F.A.B.

Product - Drench / Title - Brains Dance / Agency - CHI / Creatives - Ewan Paterson / Producer - Ben Clark / PA - Chloe London / Production Company - Rattling Stick / Director - Ringan Ledwidge / Producer - Sally Humphries / Editing Company - Work / Editor - Richard Orrick / Post Production - The Mill / Producer - Gemma Smith / 3D Producer - Laura Brooks / 3d Lead Supervisor - James Sindle / Animation Team - Jesus Parra - Josh Fourt-Wells / Motion Builder - Ben Murray / Telecine - Mick Vincent - Adam Scott / Lead Flame - Barnsley - Richard Betts / Flame Assist - Jonathan Box - Adam Lambert / VFX Shoot Supervisors - Hitesh Patel - Rich Roberts - - Airdate - 13th May 2008 / Kit - Maya - Motion Builder - Flame - Baselight

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