In 2009 we found ourselves doing adverts for Cocopops and Jameson at the same. We all started off on Jameson and then some of us moved over to the Cocopops Puppetboy and then back to Jameson. My input was initially some R+D on the way of creating animated monsters made from millions of chairs. It was interesting to find then that on Puppetboy we had to find a way of animating millions of cocopops and while our animators favoured using Maya and Renderman we eventually used Lightwave and the same techniques we’d developed for Jameson.

So once Puppetboy was finished we got called back for some last minute additions to Jameson. I first had to create a grass plaza for the final shot and then a photo-real bottle of Jameson. Now the story of the bottle could fill several pages as the artwork and assets had got mixed up between clients and agencies and whoever else until in the end I gave up trying to polish it and made everything from scratch and in the words of the client it was the “best CG bottle they’d ever had”.

That was a particularly satisfying thing to hear as to be honest I’d never done glass before, at least not to that level. The concept they wanted me to match was a heavily retouched photo that neither Lightwaves realistic shaders or the old fashioned approaches could match. So with deadline looming and with render times increasing the more realistic I went I decided the best option was to render out as many passes for the control I needed and had time for and then do as much in the comp as possible. As it was I did a pretty good job matching their concept and they were happy bunnies.

This the full advert, minus the bottle. That was added in post by the agency after they’d changed the dates on the bill board for all the different festivals.