An elephant sneaking in a construction site to have fun on an improvised trampoline, that's quite the fun concept. Based on the successful short movie by Nicolas Devaux, this story was repurposed to show the strength of a major indian cement product, Zuari Cement.
Unlike the other movie, this one use a mix of live action backgrounds where the elephant and trampoline are computer generated. Shot on location at night in Mumbai, the construction site was so big the lighting team had to manually rig more than 200 lights to illuminate the area including a giant light balloon to simulate moonlight. It took the most part of 2 nights to get the desired footages.
The CG process started way earlier than the shoot. Setting up a familiar creature like an elephant in such a way that it should fool the eye and feel real takes a lot of time. Animation setup, bone structure, modelling and zbrush took place in parallel. When the footages from the shooting were made available, the elephant was fully ready to be used in every shot and the animation and rendering process was then very straightforward. Chromeball light informations were used to match lighting as well as to give a very slight oil layer to the skin of the elephant.
About 6~7 weeks of work, 2 cg artists and a roto team. Animated in 3D Studio Max, rendered in VRay and composited in After Effects.
Since then the elephant was also used to create this DMGroup Logo.
Credits:
VFX Supervisor - Julien Vanhoenacker
Senior VFX Animator - Alejandro Garcia
