The following two spots were created for Post Honeycomb cereal and involved the “Craver” character. The physical model was actually purchased from Industrial Light and Magic, since they had created the initial few commercials with an animatronic character. The character was then rebuilt in Softimage using the model for reference which, once completed, was treated with a custom coded fur plugin written by Colin Withers.
In Craver Classroom, the spot involved having kids transform into the Craver, pieces at a time. This was accomplished by tracking facial features in the live footage and then animating new eyes and mouth models, that would match the action, and would be carefully integrated during the comp.
In Craver Museum, this shot involved having the Craver bounce around within the T-Rex’s rib cage like a pinball, followed by him falling to the ground, as the entire skeleton collapses forward, with bones shattering under their weight. It was decided that at the risk of destroying a million year old genuine skeleton at the museum, a high density model would instead be purchased from Viewpoint Datalabs. The model was then modified so that it would be ready for animation by having the appropriate number of segments of bones, for the pieces falling off.
Directed by Livio Passera.
Animated by Richard Rosenman, Livio Passera, and Sean Montgomery.
Composited by Marco Polsinelli.
Produced at Topix Animation Studios.