The Mill's 3D team worked with The Martin Agency on 'Tree', a spot for Geico. Here we see a talking tree that has fallen in the forest. The poor guy has fallen to the ground and is struck not once, but twice by lightening. What luck?
Martin Lazaro, 2D artist said "Geico 'Tree' has been a very funny project to work on."
Director:
Steve Miller
Production Company:
@Radical.Media
Agency:
The Martin Agency
"The agency creativity was hilarious, so our goal was to reinforce the comedy with visual effects. The tree was a prop and a rig had been built to make it fall several times. Later on, in post we added the CG mouth, dust and some extra plates with branches, pine cones falling on top of it. The biggest challenge was to create a mouth based on the bark and articulate it in a way that seemed natural."
3D Artist, Kevin Ives, on bringing the tree to life "The tree was surprisingly a challenge. We saw him go through quite a few iterations. Obviously there are no actual talking trees we could look to for reference. We knew we had to make it look as physically believable as possible. We tried to keep all the bark pieces rigid and ended up with much of the tree animating because of the interlocking pieces. In the final version we still have the bark pieces moving independently but they have a bit of flex to them, which allows for a much more subtle performance from the tree. The voice talent strongly influences the animation. I think we were able to stay true to that hilarious performance. Our goal, as always, was to accentuate what's great about the actors reading and try not to be distracting."Agency: The Martin Agency
Producer: Molly Souter
Creative Director: Steve Bassett
Creative: Wade Alger
Production Company: @Radical.Media
Director: Steve Miller
Executive Producer: Gregg Carlesimo
Producer: Barbara Benson
Editing Company: The Whitehouse Chicago
Editor: Matthew Wood
Edit Assist: Caleb Hepler
VFX & Design: The Mill
Executive Producer: Jo Arghiris
VFX Producer: Colin Blaney
Shoot Supervisor: Martin Lazaro
2D Lead Artist: Martin Lazaro
3D Lead Artist: Kevin Ives
2D Artist: Arianna Lago
3D Artists: Taylor Cook, Tyler Hurd, Billy Dongyoon Jang, Henning Koczy, James Williams, John Wilson, Joji Tsuruga, Justin Burton, Laura Sayan, Navdeep Singh, Olivier Mitonneau, Paul Liaw, Sam Crees