Nice Shoes Creates CG Fruit That looks Tasty Enough To Eat for V8 +Energy

Taxi engaged Nice Shoes Creative Studio to animate a series of spots and social media content to showcase the delicious, juicy ingredients that all come together in V8 +Energy, as well as to visualise the enjoyment of the energy drink expressed by their followers and consumers. The team utilised a blend of creative and technical techniques to execute the campaign, delivering :30 spots with photo-real CG fruit and a campaign of looping 2D-animated GIFs.

Taxi’s team of Chief Creative Officer Reid Miller, Executive Creative Director Damion Sammarco, Executive Director, Integrated Production & Operations Dominic Ferro, and Senior Content Producer Craig Shuster approached Nice Shoes with a brief that proposed wrapping the ingredients of V8 +Energy within each other before finally becoming enveloped by the V8 can. The team, led by Nice Shoes Creative Director Harry Dorrington initially explored a stop motion approach, but decided it would be best to realise the sequence with photoreal CG fruit to ensure the droplets and splashes of juice were enticing and appealing.

“The launch spot is basically a Russian nesting doll of fruit - it starts with green tea leaves, which are then surrounded by an apple, carrot, orange, pineapple, and finally the V8 can” said Dorrington. “We wanted to show all the appetising, healthy ingredients that go into these drinks in a visually interesting way. It has the feel of stop motion, but they’re all CG elements that we created using Photogrammetry.”

CG Director Andy Zazzera and Senior Producer Russ Dube worked together to capture reference of the fruit, shooting it on a turntable so they would get 360 degree skins of the fruit to work off of.

“Photogrammetry is a very accessible means of 3D scanning and its provides you with a really good base to build upon. It let us obtain good reference for the textures and lighting as we were  constructing the fruit,” added Zazzera. “We approached the lighting as if we were shooting live action food, drawing inspiration from a lot of the beautiful food footage our color team grades. Understanding the aesthetics of lighting for live action and cinematography go a long way in creating a believable photoreal product. We then utilised Houdini to put the finishing touches of some water simulations to make the fruit even more tempting.”

The launch campaign was followed up with a series of social videos and GIFs that visualised customers’ tweets about V8 +Energy, realised in a 2D animated style by Dorrington and Art Director/Designer Yandong Qiu, who worked with animation teams in NYC and Toronto. The animation, reminiscent of layered paper cutouts, also incorporated the photoreal fruit and product elements. Qiu and his team designed the initial character sketches in Illustrator before bringing them into After Effects to begin rigging and animating.

“This was a really great campaign for us to be a part of, as we delivered some really beautiful, imaginative visuals across a number of screens and platforms,” said Dorrington. “There’s now an understanding with partners like Taxi and V8 that viewers expect high quality advertising content on their computer screens, phones, and tablets, and we were happy to help them by delivering at that level.”