?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§Crazy, sexy, over-the-top and hugely entertaining.’s An almost inadequate description of ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§Naturally Juicy’s, the steamy, new 145-second spot for Orangina, currently airing in France.

Crazy, too, for the Mill team who worked to very tight deadlines with Psyop’s Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick to bring the Orangina cast of 12 racy animal characters – including a flamingo pole-dancer, bikini-clad rabbit and octopus waitresses – to life on screen. Opening on a shot of a quiet, sunlit glade, and ending in a riotous multi-character Orangina-splashed dance sequence, the commercial presented many head-scratching challenges for the Mill’s 3D team, one of the trickiest being to perfect the wealth of fur and feathers.

After a two-day, highly detailed and choreographed motion-capture shoot involving professional dancers performing the moves and acting out the central story, , a basic edit was completed, to be replaced later on with the 3D animated characters.

The Mill 3d team led by CGI & Animation supervisor Juan Brockhaus then took all the motion-capture data in to ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§motion builder’s where it was mapped to the rough 3D models to establish the timings of the edit. It was then brought into XSI, where hand animation of details such as fingers and facial expressions was carried out including some major re-animation of the characters. It was one thing motion capturing a dancer and quite another translating human motion to that of a ten foot high giraffe!

Meanwhile, the Mill environment team were busy collaborating on the look and feel of the scenery, mixing 3D elements such as grass, shrubs, trees and the stage with matte paintings for the landscape. In-house tools gave the Mill artists the opportunity to exchange data between Maya (used for the backgrounds) and XSI (used for the characters).

Working to such a tight deadline called for some technical hoop-jumping: the team had to begin the animation with unfinished rigs, changing the models as they went along while animating on top of the motion capture. At the same time compositing in Shake in order to integrate CG elements, atmospheric effects and live action seamlessly. Using the up-to-date motion-captured animatic, compositing supervisor Darren Christie was able to ensure that the practical effects elements lined up with the animation. ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§On set we used mix and overlay, superimposing the animation with the live action, to make sure we got what we needed,’s says Darren.

Practical effects were created for the waterfall, flash dance and bottle-bursting moments, using techniques supplied by Asylum. The Mill compositing artists also spent time developing a general look and colour palette for the commercial four main scenes ?Äì woodland glade, strip club, flash dance and party. When rendering the finished composites, the Shake team created various coloured mattes which along with the composited scenes were passed as film resolution data to Baselight where Colourist Jamie Wilkinson utilised the mattes to give Todd and Kylie the flexibility and freedom to create a stunning cinematic look.

Click here to view Naturally Juicy.

CREDITS

Product
Orangina

Title
Naturally Juicy

Agency
FFL Paris

Creatives
Farid & Joe

Producer
Robin Accard

Production Company
Stink

Psyop Directors
Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick

Executive Producers
Daniel Bergman
Sylvaine Mella

Producers
Richard Fenton
Mariya Shikher

Editing Company
Trim Editing

Editor
Paul Hardcastle

Animation & Post Production
The Mill

Producer
Stephen Venning

www.themill.com