One of the key developers of happening animation content, Vaibhav Studios has recently delivered a 35 second animated commercial for Vodafone.
After a successful command on the hearts of the audiences with Simpoo, Birthday Bhoot, BulaDi, ChulBuli, Amaron battery TVC campaign, Vodafone Parrot and popular animated characters, the studio has now created a 3D animated tvc revolving around two extremely slow Caterpillars thoroughly enjoying high speed action, which sends across a message that if you love speed, Vodafone gives you a chance to get up close to the F1 action slated later this month at Delhi.
Expressing about the initial thoughts on the Vodafone Tvc, Vaibhav Kumaresh, Founder of Vaibhav Studios and Director of this tvc, shares, “One day I got a call from Rajiv Rao, National Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather. He said, ‘we need to do a film. There are these 2 snails sitting on an F1 car and enjoying a joy ride!!’ Then he checked with me,’ How long will it take??’ That was the start! Even before the call ended, I was seeing the action in my mind!!”
Initially, Snails were the first choice for this tvc and the studio went ahead with the production, but then Vaibhav realized that DreamWorks was working on a film called Turbo, which was too close to the concept of Snail and Formula one, which they were working on.
Vaibhav added, “We immediately abandoned the snails and thought hard about who could replace the snails and after toying with a couple more options we finally settled on the chubby caterpillars.”
The tvc has taken a total of 18 days to complete with 15 artists working on it. For setting the look of the caterpillar, the studio studied varied caterpillar structures and made notes on what our caterpillars should look like.
Character design :
“We were very careful not to make it look like Heimlich from A Bug’s Life!! I think our caterpillars were more demented and I hope they turned out that way” shares, Vaibhav
Immense study on Animatics has been executed by the studio to design the flow of the tvc.
The story flow and designs were finalized on paper and the actual 3D production began on building the assets: the race track, the car, the stadium and other back ground elements.
Visual script :
“Since we had just two weeks, it was very crucial to nail down as much as possible in the pre production phase. What was given to us was just the seed of an idea. We had to really work on it to translate it into a masaaledaar film! We did loads of scribbles to figure out how and where our story would unfold. Since our film was staged on the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes car, we had to be very careful about where we staged our actions. The car is wrapped up in a variety of sponsor logos (Vodafone being the prime sponsor) and we had to ensure it didn’t turn out to be an ad for some other brand!”, adds, Vaibhav.
Models :
“On the animation front, the locomotion of the caterpillars with their multiple legs was challenging. The riggers and animators worked closely to fix the ‘bugs’ and simplify the work process. The huge scale of the virtual environment brought about its own set of problems for every stage: animation, lighting as well as renders. Scripts and codes were written to tackle them and we learnt our lessons!” adds, Vaibhav.
Vaibhav shares more, “Every frame including the characters and the backdrop was constantly changing. The glossy car had loads of reflections and every frame had around 25 passes coming together. I am glad it looks ‘vibrant’.
Film Stills :
The entire tvc is spearheaded by Vaibhav Kumaresh and produced by Vaibhav Studios with the Animation Production headed by Bhavesh Gondaliya, Chandni Chudasama, Modeling done by Tapas Jana, Bhavesh Gondaliya,Textures, surfacing executed by Avinash Gulhane, Rajib Debnath, Sweta Nayak, Animation brought into action by Ajit Aher, Dapun Rai Dewan and Karan Kotian, Lighting and compositing deliverd by Sagar Kulkarni and Priya Kotian, Production assistance given by Baadal Chaurasiya, Sound and music design by Roto Shah with the advertising agency being Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai
“I would like to firstly offer big thanks to team O&M for trusting us once again with this crucial campaign and a bigger thank you to all our team mates at Vaibhav Studios. They ensured that creative juices never stopped flowing even at odd hours, concludes, Vaibhav.”
Vaibhav Studios is working on a series of animated Tvc’s for the Vodafone campaign and have also delivered 4 more short TVCs of 10 seconds in addition to print stills and Aston strips. Vaibhav says, “We started off with just one film. On seeing the finished film, Vodafone along with O&M decided they had to do more with these two caterpillars!”