Goldfish Crackers Ad

I recently came across this advert and realised there was a whole campaign to promote Goldfish Crackers. Blur Studios created season 4 which included 10 different commercials, developing off the story that ended from season 3. It's not only promoting the brand but is also telling a story which can get people interested and to keep up with each episode. Even though each episode is only about 30 seconds long, everything has been executed to such a high standard, composition and layout, textures, animation, lighting, nothing has been missed out.

Leo Santos was the director and supervising animator for season 4, "Each Goldfish character has a distinct personality, from exuberant to adventurous, and the animation really brought them to life. It was important that each could be expressive in close-up shots and they needed to talk and emote with believability. We worked very carefully on the character rigging, color and textures to give them a lifelike feel," (link here). Even though they are crackers, they still hold the properties of an actual fish when it's underwater. One part really demonstrates this well, as the toys come to a sudden stop and pile on top of each other, the goldfish as if they were underwater come to a stop at a lesser degree but then float/swims down off them. When you watch the other episodes you do see that each goldfish has its own personality and this is also portrayed through their actions. The model for the goldfish is pretty simple, yet the animation of them flows really well and makes them seem quite life-like and more believable as a character.

What I find really clever is the fact that, when the camera goes inside the hoover bag, the dust that has built up has been made to resemble coral, the lighting and textures make this area seem more like an underwater place. I didn't notice this at first, but after watching it back it makes sense and works really well. A lot of time and effort went in to making this commercials, 3 months of pre-production and 9 months of animation for the whole season. Just the textures alone are so well done, in episode 3 especially there are real close ups of the carpet and sofa and you can see all the threads and fibres that make up the material. It's astonishing really how something can look so life-like yet fit so well into an animated/cartoon like feature. I'd love to be a part of animating a feature film one day, but even working on commercials like these, I would be really happy with. They are story driven and the attention to detail is spot on.