FSM has Fun ‘n’ Games with Coco Pops

The latest campaign for Kellogg’s Coco Pops by FSM via JWT combines some sophisticated technology with extreme visual simplicity.

 

The Marco Polo TVC launched on Sunday featuring an up-close-and-personal approach to the stalwart cereal brand - a Coco Pop filming another Coco Pop at macro level. Two additional TVCs will back up the campaign at a later date.

 

KELLOGG'S COCO POPS from FSM on Vimeo.

Winning the pitch against talented Australian and international VFX houses, it was the FSM animation test that demonstrated an alignment of vision that ultimately secured the job.

 

It was decided early on that the Coco Pops would remain in their natural state without arms, legs, facial features or props that rendered the Marco Polo story one of the trickiest to tell. 

 

The action and characterisation is not easy to interpret visually with the hero character blind folded and trying to find the other players. The FSM team was tasked with making a Coco Pop perform like it had its eyes covered without an actual blindfold. Body language became the imperative with visual gags like the Coco Pop bumping into the spoon communicating the role.

 

FSM Creative Director, Andreas Wanda, said that the team identified challenges early on as there wasn’t a great deal of dynamic action to work with as the Coco Pops interacted with the bowl of milk.

“There was very little activity in the liquid and that boiled down to the scale at which we were viewing,” he said. “So we made the decision to scale it up and turned down the viscosity to give us more detail in our splashes. We also needed to see some curve in the liquid caused by surface tension around every Coco Pop. Unfortunately this doesn't just come out of the box when using specialist 3D software so in order to achieve this it required a multi-step process.”

 

“We set the scene at sunrise on a beautiful morning with warm light streaming in through the windows and light rays in the air. We then knew how to light our miniature world. And that's exactly how we wanted it to feel - like you're actually in this luscious milk pool with these child-like Coco Pops. Everything was rendered in one hit - motion blur and depth of field on every element.”

 

FSM produced all live action components along with editing, grade and final compositing. 

 

JWT:

Senior Art Director - Gerhard Myburgh

Senior Copy Writer - Paul Suters

Agency Producer - Rachel Devine

 

FSM:

Creative Directors - Andreas Wanda/Emile Rademeyer

Executive Producer - Dean Sutherland

Producer - Tina Braham

CG Supervisor - Chris Gardner

On Set Supervisor - Stuart Mallia

Lead Lighting - Adam Waddington

Fluid FX TD - Serge Kovalenko

Animation - Alex Goodwin

3D Artist - Amanda Lee

Lead Compositor - Howard Hill 

Compositor - Melissa Mai

DOP - Alex Dufficy