Many of us zone out on our commutes, whiling away the minutes with our smartphones and magazines—but surely anyone would notice a monkey swinging through the window, or a flock of ducks disembarking at the station. You’d also be hard-pressed to avoid spotting an enormous, beautiful elephant tromping alongside the train cars.
In the TV advert, Adopt Marie, a zoo’s worth of vibrant animals flood out of an arriving train and into the arms to eager caretakers. But when a clearly distraught woman and her two young children emerge from the train car, nobody pays attention to them; nobody bothers to help. This scene drives home a message from the Czech non-profit charity, Women for Women: Shouldn’t we embrace and care for our fellow human beings as we do animals?
A post-production team was recruited for the TV short, with a major task—designing and executing a lifelike CG elephant that could coexist alongside living, breathing animals that had been filmed on-site. A web-based video review platform has been a crucial tool to help the team stay in sync with clients and collaborators alike.
Adopt Marie: Creating a Realistic CG Elephant
Executing such a realistic creature started with technically precise previsualization, discussed in-person with the directors of Adopt Marie—a dynamic duo known in the industry as ‘Wabisabi’, made up of Gašper Šnuderl and Stephen Zálešák. Building on these discussions, the team began to create a photorealistic CG elephant from scratch. The elephant’s speed of movement, size and other characteristics needed to be adapted to avoid pillars, trains and the reality of the location. A full-size elephant head placeholder was necessary on-set, along with complex previsualization and a motion control camera set-up.
As the team moved into post-production, it was no longer feasible to meet with Wabisabi in-person to approve creative assets, which continued to evolve every day. Work in progress had to be shared with Wabisabi remotely as shots moved through the pipeline—from visual effects to compositing and final renders. The team turned to a web-based video review tool to streamline communication over these developing visual assets.
Using the video review platform, the creative team could watch shots together with Wabisabi in real-time—from just about any device, anywhere in the world. “Our field of work is very creative and subjective,” explains the VFX supervisor and head of the 3D advertising department. “There’s no precise, mathematical formula for describing the tone of an image. Directors and clients alike need to see exactly what you’re talking about, zoom into the same area, and mark up an asset—as if you’re sitting in the same room.”
Regular review sessions were necessary throughout production on Adopt Marie to ensure every single part of the elephant, every muscle movement and texture, remained consistent. The execution process involved standard animal workflow modeled according to anatomical references—including a reference skeleton, setting up muscles, fine-tuning the textures and shading to achieve the realistic look. All the details were animated and skin was simulated to make sure that the elephant’s movements appeared believable, even alongside the animals that were filmed in live action. Every nuance had to be regularly reviewed in pursuit of a photoreal final result.
For the team, the chance to work on a 3D animal and help raise awareness of such a great cause made for the ideal project. “Our team is very invested in animals—not only in real life, but also because we love the challenge of developing them in 3D,” says the VFX supervisor. “Also, many of us have children and can relate to the problems of providing for a loved one. Adopt Marie was a nice intersection of our professional ambitions and personal values.”
Facilitating International Collaboration
For other projects, especially those in which the clients or collaborators aren’t local, the video review tool played a role throughout the entire process. The team often uses the platform very early on, during bidding and previsualization, as well as marking and making notes during conference calls once they have storyboards in-hand. It helps clarify the scope of work before really digging in to bring a client’s vision to life.
One particular project was a commercial for a Russian chocolate brand Korkunov, in which a naval officer is seen sprinting away from his ship—across the treacherous, frozen terrain—to deliver a gift of chocolate to his love on the shore. The team handled full environment CG as well as the ship and ice, expanding upon basic background plates to really set the mood of the spot. The video review tool was essential to help collectively work out the layout and tone.
“Our clients were based in Russia and the director in South Africa, so it was not possible to develop the project without the tool,” the VFX supervisor notes. “Only the tool allowed us to go revision-by-revision and share everything with clients and the agency.”
The Perfect Fit for Review and Approval
When the team clarifies details for any given project, they annotate and make notes directly on a scene in the platform, which can be easily shared with the client for final approval. Its toolset provides flexibility and accessibility for advertising clients – a reactive industry where projects can change from day-to-day and short form campaigns quickly move through the studio pipeline.
Ultimately, the platform serves a key role, fueling remote collaboration with clients, agencies, and creative partners near and far—and closing any physical gap with ease.
The platform is the team’s main meeting point, particularly since many clients and directors are located overseas. “We have only had positive experiences. That’s why we keep using it.”
