Turning paper sculptures digital, and bringing them to life for Chester Zoo's Wild Worlds Ad Campaign.
Digitally re-creating two of Helen Musselwhite’s hand-crafted paper sculptures, both of which were to be used for their own bespoke animations and TV campaigns. The aim was to maintain the visual aesthetic of the paper sculptures, whilst capturing the ‘heart and soul’ of the scenes through animation.
Chester Zoo’s Wild Worlds was a new summer festival for 2018 where the Zoo was transformed into unique worlds inspired by scientists, entertainers, landscape designers and artists. Brand consultancy and design studio Edit_developed the brand and the concept “let your imagination roam wild”, which then drove the creative for the entire campaign.
We were given the task of digitally re-creating two of Helen Musselwhite’s hand-crafted paper sculptures, both of which were to be used for their own bespoke animations and TV campaigns. The aim was to maintain the visual aesthetic of the paper sculptures, whilst capturing the ‘heart and soul’ of the scenes through animation.
MightyGiant added a new dimension to the project and captured the energetic and immersive nature of the campaign. They executed a challenging brief quickly and seamlessly and their hands-on team were a dream to work with! A true collaborative effort.”
Both of the paper sculptures represented miniature ‘worlds’, consisting of multiple paper cut-out layers, populated with small paper models. Photos of the sculptures were supplied to us, to be used as visual reference. These photos, along with some notes on proportions and dimensions, allowed us to start digitally re-creating the sculptures. Our first task was to create the storyboard which we’d use as the basis for our animation, and would allow us to work out what elements we’d need to model in 3D, this gave us an indication of what to prepare for in terms of modelling.
The 3D assets were built first, beginning with the back layers and working forward through the layers one by one. This process was repeated for the flat cut-out assets (such as the leaves) once the 3D assets were built and positioned. The assets were built with how they would later be animated in mind with special importance placed on how they would handle the various deformations which would be applied at a later stage.