Agency: Pancho
Client: Mountain Goat
Project: Ginger Beer
Role: Compositor, Motion Designer
3D Animator: Akira Dawson
Platform: TVC, Billboards (print), Social
It’s not every day you get asked to stick a ginger wig on a goat, but that was exactly what was required for this campaign by Mountain Goat to promote their new alcoholic ginger beer. The challenge was to seamlessly integrate scans of whimsical ginger wigs onto existing photographs of mountain goats in different landscapes, while still appearing natural and comically effective. The scenes also needed to look alive, with a breeze ruffling the hair and vegetation and subtle camera movement.
To bring this to life I gradually rebuilt each landscape as multiple layered plates, separating the foreground, midground and background using extensive set extensions, and rotoscoping. I then meticulously rigged every individual clump of hair on the wigs and any branches, grass or fur in each scene that would be hypothetically light enough to move in a breeze. Thus prepped, I began the animation component. First, I added a turbulence effect to simulate a slight breeze, then adding a virtual camera that slowly pushed in on each goat creating a parallax effect and sense of depth in the scene as it moved through layers staggered in 3D space.
The sequence was then added to the other components of the TVC such as supers and the 3D rendered cans. The commercial was popular and used across a TVC, printed billboards and social media campaign, adding to the distinctive brand visibility of Mt Goat Brewery.
