Pigeons Give a Bird's Eye View for JetBlue Airline

Brickyard VFX, a bi-coastal VFX and animation studio, and General Gau, its in-house arm for custom character-based content, recently completed work on JetBlue Airways' "Air on the Side of Humanity" campaign via Mullen. The three-spot campaign engages viewers and conveys the JetBlue experience in a fresh and witty way -- through pigeons, the ultimate "frequent fliers," discussing the desire to be treated with some respect and humanity amid the plights of modern air travel. The spots launched this fall in Boston.

Brickyard's main task was creating entirely CG pigeons for the opening soaring shots in :60 "Air on the Side of Humanity" and :30 "Grounded." General Gau's Anders Beer filmed hero plates of the pigeons and provided on-set VFX supervision. Then Brickyard and General Gau artists, led by Geoff McAuliffe and Beer, created two digital hero pigeons using Autodesk Maya with V-Ray. The team also composited plates of real pigeons, captured against a green screen, throughout these two spots and the third spot, :30 "Out of the Blue."

"Offering flexibility was key in this project, in order to successfully illustrate the different stories," said Brickyard VFX executive producer Kirsten Andersen. "Some shots just required compositing in the real pigeons, some shots required compositing in the real pigeons plus making a subtle change, such as the direction one pigeon's head was pointing, and then some shots just couldn't be achieved through live action and required full CG. Our talented team delivered whatever was needed."

The "Air on the Side of Humanity" campaign marks Brickyard's latest collaboration with Mullen for JetBlue, a relationship dating back several years, and with Hungry Man director Hank Perlman, who recently tapped Brickyard to develop the first fully CG Chester Cheetah for a nationwide Cheetos campaign.

Credits: JetBlue "Air on the Side of Humanity"

Agency: Mullen
SVP, Executive Creative Director: Tim Vaccarino
SVP, Executive Creative Director: Dave Weist
SVP, Group Creative Director: Dylan Bernd
Senior Copywriter: Jack Collier
Senior Art Director: Dan Madsen
Executive Director of Integrated Production: Liza Near
Director of Broadcast: Zeke Bowman
Agency Producer: Vera Everson

Production Company: Hungry Man
Director: Hank Perlman
Executive Producer: Mino Jarjoura
Producer: Martha English
Production Supervisor: Lucy Sheridan
Director of Photography: Tom Richmond

Visual Effects: Brickyard VFX
VFX Executive Producer: Kirsten Andersen
Lead VFX Artist: Geoff McAuliffe 
VFX Artists: Andy Diefenbach, Peter Bullis, Robin Hobart, Gina Downing, Jimi Simmons, Kevin McDonald, Sean Mclean
Digital Artist: Evan E. Richards

Character Design and Animation Co.: General Gau
Animation Director: Anders J.L. Beer
Animator: Brian White, Evan Richards
CG Supervisor: Brian White