Summary
What's cuter than a petite lap giraffe who sits next to you on the couch, perched atop a pillow? Absolutely nothing! That wasn't lost on DirecTV or Grey after thousands of people raved about the diminutive creatures on a YouTube post of Opulence, the spot which introduced the exotic pet to viewers in the first place.
"Creating the petitelapgiraffe.com site was a
great way to work across all platforms within The Mill," says Ben
Smith, our Creative Director. "It was truly an integrated effort."
The Mill's charge was to create entertaining content and direct the
live action for the website. This included sourcing and dressing
the farm (a petting zoo in Queens, N.Y.), finding props and
capturing footage. The footage was then used to create scenarios
for the website, allowing 18 unique experiences for the user when
logging in to visit the giraffe. The teams had access to the
already created giraffe asset from Opulence, making a much more efficient
pipeline for creating the website and Gym.
Gregor's bulging biceps presented a fun challenge for The Mill's
team. "The biggest difficulty with creating the muscles for the
Oligarch in Gym was finding the balance between making them big and
vein-y but still believable," notes Smith. "They had to remain
realistic and look like part of the actor's body but be remarkable
enough to make the audience notice and laugh at them. We tried many
variations until finding exactly the right tone." Another challenge
for the animators was recreating all of the diodes in CG so they
could move with the now animated muscles.
The end result - krasivyĭ, nyet?
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