The spot begins with a shot of a ‘nervy’ giraffe in a hazy desert setting, uneasy about using 4G data whilst abroad as he struggles to stand on his four feet. The ad then shifts to a large rock with the head of a giraffe poking out, when it’s body emerges the viewer is faced with a flamboyant CG hybrid creature. It’s long giraffe neck is adjoined to a bouncing flamingo body, all seamlessly crafted by The Mill’s VFX team.
The creature oozes sass, as it struts around the desert setting, before taking flight and heading into a mystical world, liberated by Three’s roaming deal which allows customers to freely browse in over sixty countries across the world.
The Mill’s VFX team created both the ‘nervy’ giraffe, the sassy giraffamingo and the entire desert world through which the giraffamingo roams, entirely in CG.
Lead 3D Artist Alex Hammond explains, ‘Being a full CG job, it was essential to define the look of the characters and environment in the early stages. Working closely with The Perlorian Brothers, we defined key references of how our world should look and produced multiple concepts which helped to show the progression of how surreal our landscape would become.
Early animation tests allowed us to develop how our bizarre character- a cross between a giraffe and flamingo would behave.
It had to be 'sassy and confident' which meant our animators looked at lot of music video references, largely by Beyoncé!’
Mill Colourist Mick Vincent explains, 'With the Three "Go Roam" all the clever 3D work had already been done so all that was needed was a light touch in a controlled environment where the concentration was focused on colour.