In a new campaign for Sears created by ad agency Y&R Chicago with stunning 2D and 3D visual effects from Method Studios, the love seems to be for spring itself and the backyard pleasures that go with it.
As a snail raises its sleepy head, a plant breaks the earth's surface and begins its time-lapsed move skyward. As the odd-looking plant begins to bloom, however, it is quickly apparent that this is no ordinary garden. For one thing, the first plant's flowers are made up entirely of silver barbeques, complete with blue propane flames. The bursting bud of a lush red flower contains a riding lawn tractor, while lily pads in a nearby pond open to reveal no less than five traditional push mowers.
Finally, the multitude of red petals on a geranium-like plant turn out to be bright red patio umbrellas, some of which detach and twirl lightly to the earth. "This spring, the changes are everywhere," intones a knowing voiceover, "but they all start at Sears." The spot was created in both 30 and 60 second versions, the longer of which contains more imaginative plants and will be a contestant in the upcoming Cannes Lions internationals advertising festival.
"The Sears spots were a big challenge, because effects like this can look really tacky if you're not careful," says Method's Cedric Nicolas, who served as Lead 2D VFX Artist on the project. "The spot came to us through director Rupert Sanders, who we often collaborate with. With some really close-up shots on the plants, totally photorealistic effects, as well as great cinematography and depths of field...we knew we had a chance to do something great."
Armed with the spring-like items Sears wished to feature within the natural scene, Rupert, Cedric and production designer James Chinlund began the designing of the plants to hold the items. What they quickly discovered, however, was that in order to seamlessly blend the natural and mechanistic elements, the plants themselves would have to take on a less organic look.
"Rupert was absolutely adamant that the plants have an entirely realistic, organic animation," says Nicolas. "To that end, we used real ferns, lilies and other plants as reference, but we made them look as if they're made out of non-organic materials such as metal, plastic, rubber, carbon fiber, etc. So they grow just like real plants, but they look like the gardening equipment they contain."
In preparation for what promised to be a complex shoot, the Method team worked with Halon, a previsualization company, to previsualize and integrate 2D drawings into a live action world. Further real-world reference was provided by Chinlund, who actually created tangible versions of the what-would-be 3D models:
"James also built some plastic lilies, so Rupert could put them in the frame and see how they'd look," says Nicolas. "He built tons of stuff like that. It was a fantastic collaboration. We all wanted the spot to look good, and I had great confidence in James, Rupert and Laurent."
The latter is Laurent Ledru, CG Creative Director at Method Studios. Ledru is quick to admit that "Spring" held unique challenges for the team:
"Rupert shot the whole scene so beautifully that it was actually a greater challenge to seamlessly integrate these strange plants," he says matter-of-factly. "This was full-on CG with a very fine line between fantasy and reality. You have to give each plant as much love as possible, so we did a lot of R&D and exploration followed by a lot of preparation and render time. You need to be perfect with CG like this, because audiences are not very forgiving."
With a schedule of only two months, the Method team had no room for error. They knew from the start, however, that 3D close-ups like the ones they were planning would require a great deal of rendering time:
"When you model a 3D object, you have to find the right line between the highest possible level of detail and a reasonable render time," says Ledru. "That line is always difficult to draw; the more detailed the models, the more rendering time. You've got to find the right balance. We used Autodesk Maya and mental ray, together with a lot of IBL (Image-Based Lighting) for which we used 360-degree pictures of an environment and used them for better reflection and light impact on the CG. It is a somewhat complicated technique, which we'd never used before, but we used it on every shot. Obviously, it worked out well."
"In this business, you've always got to try new methods, even when it adds to the pressure," agrees Nicolas. "We also used 16-bit floating point for compositing in Inferno and NUKE, a Digital Domain software. It was tense, but we got it done."
Technologies used: Alias Maya, Mental Ray, Discreet Inferno.
Lead 2D VFX Artist: Cedric Nicolas
CG Creative Director: Laurent Ledru
CG Technical Supervisor: Andrew Bell, Gil Baron
3D VFX Artist: Chi-Wei Hsu, Chris Smallfield, Dan Dixon, John Baker, Marco Iozzi, Pasha Ivanov, Reza Rasou, Scott Metzger, Seong Joon Lee
Junior 2D VFX Artist: Katrina Salicrup, Sarah Eim
Visual Effects Executive Producer: Neysa Horsburgh
Head of Production: Sue Troyan
Visual Effects Producer: Rich Rama
Director: Rupert Sanders
Director of Photography: Chris Soos
Production Design/Art Direction: James Chinlund
Agency: Young & Rubicam
Creative Director: Nancy Hannon
Art Director: Isabella Ferreira
Agency Producer: Kim Mohan
Copywriter: Pete Figel
Production Company: MJZ
Executive Producer: Lisa Rich
Producer: Kim Shapiro
Editorial Company: The White House
Editor: Neal Smith
Telecine Company: Syndicate
Colorist: Beau Leon