Not To Scale/Natl for Amex “Clay” [UPDATE]

For this new American Express advert, Not To Scale‘s National Television created a believable claymation look entirely in CG. According to the release: “Shooting the elements for real would have left the Agency and Client little room for ongoing changes and edit decisions, so bringing the script to life in Maya was quickly agreed as the best possible option for all eventualities.”

Makes sense to me. I’m sure this approach has been used many times before without me even knowing it. The first time I remember bumping into it was in Coke “Cloud” from Psyop back in 2006.

Hear No Evil’s music and sound design for “Clay” are worth noting. I love the accordion fill during the lobster sequence, and the way the tympani-based percussion gives way to a funky trap set by the spot’s end. It really helps give the whole spot forward movement.

Credits can be found on National’s project page. The spot can also be viewed on Not To Scale’s site under Latest.

UPDATE: As promised in the comments, we contacted National to ask them how they pulled off this feat of faux-claymation. They responded with a generously technical explanation:

Our biggest challenge was creating a cg animation that behaved like claymation and yet was flexible enough to accommodate modeling and animation changes throughout the client approval process.  We kept our focus on retaining a handcrafted straight-ahead animation style but wound up using blendshapes in an unorthodox way.

We started by modeling out the end objects and then went about ‘deconstructing’ them as if they were clay we could push and pull.  Then through the magic of blendshapes we would take those primitive objects and ‘reconstruct’ them.  This all is much clearer when drawn out.

When objects needed a more staccato building sequence we would freeze blendshape animations at mid point, push them around and then add it to the blendshape sequence.  Between any two transformations we had on average about 6 or 7 blendshapes that we went through.

The real magic then happened with a set of shaders that we built to create the ‘plasticine’ look.  A subtle procedural bump and noise was added to the shader to create an uneven texturing that mimics fingerprints.  Then we added an uneven lighting scheme that subtly strobed to mimic the feel that this was being shot over time.