The Moving Picture (and a squirrel)

One of the biggest project I've worked on has just recently come to completion. I was approached by the folks at the Pool to design all the characters and backgrounds for a fully animated ad for the Eurospar chain of shopping centres. It was quite a task, spanning from storyboarding to stylising existing logos and signs.

Here are some early character designs, first up being Ball, the mischievous family dog who provides a lot of the personality and humour in the ad.


Next some of the designs for the family; Mom Avril, budding emo daughter Holly and energetic son Max.


These were polished up, drawn out as character sheets for the animators to build 3d models from


...along with with some vehicles for the street scenes, most important being the family jalopy:


...and of course the staff populating the Eurospar (and a squirrel):


The tone and feel of the backgrounds were worked up from early on, here's a first attempt at a street scene...


...which, after some story rejigging, was eventually replaced with:


And here's the family house:



So all this (and a lot more) was taken by some incredibly skilled folk and turned into a moving world. The backgrounds were mapped onto 3d shapes so the camera pans and zooms would pick up a sense of depth. The character models were animated acting and reacting with personality, and all came together in the finished product:

Eurospar - Easy Peasy from The POOL on Vimeo.

You can see the ad on Irish television right now.