Stop-motion model-making combines with digital animation to create the most convincingly cute mouse family you’ll see all year.
Rodents are renowned for gnawing through cables, and now we know why. Just like human families, mice need superfast fibre-optic broadband in order to live in harmony and enjoy all the benefits of 21st-century technology. Working with director Tom O’Meara, Passion Pictures has explained everything in a 60-second spot for the Spanish telecom provider Movistar.
Everybody’s first reaction when they meet main mouse Lucas Lopez and his family is that they are super cute, and they’re backed up with a story full of charm and feeling, with a catchy song and a lifestyle that resonates – apart, perhaps, from the giant cheese machine they have in the kitchen. When Lucas sees a fibre optic being installed, he grabs a cable and routes it into their hidden world.
Giving the mice and their home instant visual appeal hinged on Passion Pictures’ ability to combine traditional stop-motion and digital animation techniques. The sets were physically constructed – the hall and kitchen were built at human size, with the rest of the Lopez home carefully modelled in miniature by stop-motion experts. Although the mice you see in the piece are CGI, they were all based on handmade maquettes that defined the look and feel of the characters.
“I think the materials and textures are what embeds us in the ‘real’ world,” says Tom O’Meara. “We spent a long time making sure the tiles had a good shine to them and that the floor of the mouse home was made of real wood. We even put some real dirt on the walls of the mouse burrow. Because the sets were created using so many true-to-life materials, it meant the team creating the felt-covered mice had their work cut out to make the fur look perfectly imperfect, to match up with the live-action footage.”
The CG operators at Passion Studio in London certainly met this challenge. Watching the commercial in HD or 4K, you can see each individual fibre in the felt that makes up the mice’s bodies. The warmth, softness, and tactility of the mice, alongside their facial expressions and the dynamics of their movement, dial up the cuteness factor.
“To make the fur look perfect, we used a tool inside Maya called Yeti, which produces fur, feathers, and other textures procedurally. Tom created some character reference models for us for all the look development that gave us a great basis to make all the fabric and materials really realistic,” says Simon Brown, head of CG at Passion Studio.
Passion Studio created this GIF to demonstrate the difference the Yeti felt makes.
With the handmade sets digitised using a combination of lidar scanning, photogrammetry and photography, the rodent environment was modelled in 3D and then clothed in real-world textures. The mice were then inserted into the sets and animated. “I worked closely with the animators to ensure we had a stop motion feel and sensibility applied to the movements. After the characters were rendered, we composited them into the sets to give them a seamless look. It’s the first time I have used this technique, and I felt in very safe hands with Passion,” says Tom.
The brief for the piece was put together by the agency VLM Madrid, and with all the ideas they contributed, there’s plenty of scope for future episodes in the lives of the Lopez family.
“I’d really love to find the opportunity to push this hybrid technique of digital characters in miniature sets further. It’s been a joy working with Passion’s CG team. I cannot wait for the script to come in, which will allow me to do this again,” Tom adds.
