GECKO LOVE STORY

Not changing your ceiling could become a big story ! That’s the idea we had to picture in this commercial for Shera Flexiboard ! To do so, the two CG characters take the spectator through an incredible Shakespearean love story.

Geckos are very popular in Thailand, but still some people can easily be afraid of them. Animating the geckos, and trying to give them this cute and attaching look was quite a challenge. We had long discussions with the director about the design and the final look of the gecko : “should we go for complete realistic look, or should we go for cartoon ? “. We finally came up with this hybrid style between realism, cartoon animation and modeling.

Here an example of a first linetest (left). It was definitely a wrong direction and and we decided with the director to go for a much cuter look (right) :

Another texture test. Here a comparison Male/Female. They both needed to have a specific animation and shader, as we needed to clearly be able to differentiate them. Later on the modeling was revised for the male, and the textures were changed, as the director thought the dark spots on the back look scary.

Check out the final shots in the video embedded below !

An interesting project which received the Silver Lion Award at Cannes Festival in July 2007 !