How Buck brought a clan of animated cookie-baking elves to fully-CG life
Keebler cookies have been around for years, and the animated Keebler elves first burst on to the scene back in the 1960s, with the adorable clan cooking their treats in a hollow tree. This year, it was the responsibility of design-driven production company Buck to bring head elf Ernie and his band of bakers to life in the company’s first full-CG commercial.
CG supervisor Doug Wilkinson explains: “Ad agency Leo Burnett approached us to help bring the Keebler brand characters into full 3D. They’ve lived in 2D for a long time and Keebler wanted to redefine them in a way that would last for many years to come.”
To do this, the team at Buck used a wide range of software, including Maya, V-Ray, Shave and a Haircut, V-Ray Scatter for Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, TopoGun, UV Layout, Nuke and some proprietary tools.
“We developed a tool for Maya we call the Buck Renderlayer and Element Worksheet,” says Wilkinson. “It’s inspired by Andrew Chapman’s Render Passes for Maya plug-in, an old but very powerful render layer system. This tool allows a lighting lead to create render layer set-ups in a lighting file and then export those layers. It can then be used to automatically and non-destructively import the render layer changes into another lighting scene.”
Discover 2012′s best 3D movies over at our sister site, Creative Bloq.
Posted on Friday, October 19th, 2012 at 1:00 pm under Commercial, Showcase. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
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