In The Scrum For Guinness

2 February 2008

Guinness – official sponsors of the Irish Rugby Squad – have produced a new commercial in support of their team’s quest to win this year’s Six Nations Tournament.

The spot – entitled “Home Grown” – opens on a misty Irish field from which twisted stalks and branches rapidly emerge as its surface cracks.  An eight strong group of massive tree creatures appear taking on the form of a set of rugby forwards facing their opposition before locking horns in the scrum.

In order to help realise this ambitious idea, Glassworks commissioned artemdigital to motion capture 8 large rugby lads performing a variety of moves to drive the animation in the spot.  These included pulling themselves up as though out of the ground, roaring into life and scrumming down.
This was no mean feat, as capturing 8 characters in such a small space is quite complex – not to mention finding Lycra suits to fit them!

The data was then cleaned and processed before being fed back into Glasswork’s pipeline where the animation team applied it to their tree characters and created the finished animation.

A powerful message is delivered: a home grown Irish team backed by the very best known home grown Irish tipple.

To watch the spot click here.

“"The most challenging task we had in terms of motion was to create a rugby scrum of tree creatures. Capturing the players one by one was discussed but was pretty undesirable because of the lack of interaction between the players and wouldn't have worked. artemdigital gamely stepped up to the plate and took on the challenge of capturing all 8 guys at once; a nightmare of occluded markers I'm told. They worked very hard at processing the data and the result was very successful. They responded promptly to all the problems we had. It was good experience."”

Alastair Hearsum, Head of 3D, Glassworks

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