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Our Audi Hummingbird Hero

03 February 2012

Is it a bird..? Is it a plane..? Close…… it's the little metallic bird we designed for Audi, whom we love! So, we asked the team behind the Audi 'Hummingbird' spot a few questions about how this project came about and most importantly, how they made our little winged friend so likeable.

Q: What was the brief given to you by Audi?

A: They wanted us to design and create a hummingbird made entirely out of car parts, as if he had actually been designed by the Audi team itself. The new Audi A6 car is built on very lightweight technology, so they wanted us to showcase all of the car's qualities in this agile little bird.
(Rahel Makonnen - Executive Producer, 3D)

Q: What was the main challenge you faced in doing this?

A: Well, it's very tricky to take something that exists in real life, but to have him made out of entirely different textures and materials, while still acting and moving like the real thing.                      
(Rahel)

Q: What was the main thing you wanted to achieve?

A: We really wanted to develop the personality of the hummingbird; this was the main tool we had to make our bird believable. He had to be friendly, he had to be cheeky and playful, he had to be elegant and at the same time he had to project all the qualities of the Audi car.                                                          
(Jorge Montiel - Head of Animation)

Q: What was the main tool you used to achieve this?

A: The Audi car itself has very elegant and clean lines, so the design had to be a simple one. This meant that the bird's movement and body language were the main ways we could express his character. As an animator, the most challenging part of this process was working on the animatic, this is where we played around with the timing and the story, and it's all about the story. Then, in the final animation, this is where we were able perfect the hummingbird's body expression. It was very time consuming but it was that extra 5% where we worked on all the little details of movement and the quality of our work that made the difference.                                     
(Jorge)

Q: How important was the compositing work in the project?

A: We had a large amount of layers to composite together in order to make the hummingbird and his world believable and realistic. Not only the bird, background and sky but we also added lost of atmospheric affects like dust and pollen and most importantly light, achieving a daytime 'photo-real' look was central to the hummingbird's world.                               
(Hugo Guerra - Joint Head of Nuke)

Q: How big a part did light play in this world?

A: Huge! We did a lot of research on the lighting; it was one of the few 'real' elements we could use in this fully CG world. Our approach was to take a lot of photos taken in bright sun light and to use them as references for all the little subtle effects that happen in normal photography; the small chromatic aberrations of light, the distortion of the lens, and the small little glints of the sun hitting the metal body of the bird. Also, we really didn't want it to be a cold and unfeeling environment, so we added a lot of warmth by introducing warm light effects and lens flares.                       
(Tom Bussell - Head of 3D)

Q: Was everyone happy with the result?

A: It's an amazing piece of work to be a part of and everyone was very happy! It was a joint project with BBH and director Daniel Barber and we are always very excited to work with both of them!
(Rahel)

Audi 'Hummingbird' has just been nominated for 3 VES (Visual Effects Society) awards, the results of which will be announced next Tuesday, February 7th... In the meantime, you can click here to see him in action!