Cadbury “Easter Bunny”

 

CG Supervisor and Lead Stuart White, together with VFX Supervisor and Composite lead, Nick Ponzoni, embarked on a comprehensive R&D phase, in close collaboration with Spiccia to ultimately create the most photorealistic computer generated Bunny, which had to appear as though it was practically captured in camera. The look of the bunny was first established, concentrating on the color tone and the appearance of the fur. Setting up an efficient workflow for fur simulation and its rendering was of great importance. As a result of intensive R&D, Fin decided to use the software Yeti, by Peregrine Labs to create the fur texture, combined with the rendering software V-Ray, for ultimate photorealistic results. The motion or animation of the bunny was also of great importance, where Fin worked to find the right balance of having the bunny move in an anthropomorphic way, whilst also staying true to the movements of a real bunny.

 

A detailed previsualization of the whole commercial was created with Spiccia.  This served to both verify that the action of the bunny was flowing nicely in the edit and, once filming began, it formed a blueprint to guide the crew through the filming of each shot.  In addition to the previz, the on-set crew framed each shot of the imaginary bunny with the help of a stand in prop bike which was pushed through each shot to establish composition, timing and focus marks.  For every scene that would eventually contain the digital bunny, Fin's VFX supervisors filmed a real rabbit pelt draped over the traditional grey ball to serve as an accurate reference point for how real fur reacted under those specific lighting conditions.

 

Anamorphic lenses were used to film the commercial, contributing a lush cinematic aesthetic to the images.  Conversely they also added a huge degree of difficulty to the 3d team's mission.  When combined with detailed cloth simulations for the waistcoat and thick CG rabbit fur, it's no wonder that some frames of the commercial took over 12 hours each to render.

 

Nick Ponzoni composited all of the final Bunny elements and environment composites on Flame, together with senior compositor Michael Smith. Ponzoni also finalized the grade in-house using both Lustre and Flame software.