Bringing Fantasies to Life for Center Parcs

Brothers and Sisters' new campaign for Center Parcs follows their multi-award-winning effort from last year, Bears. 

This year, instead of a family of bears we have a normal human family who manage to bring to life (with a little help from VFX house Electric Theatre Collective) an assortment of fantastical creatures as they enjoy a family break at Center Parcs. 

Below, ECD Andy Fowler and ETC's lead VFX artist Ryan Knowles and post producer Sian Jenkins talk us through the process of creating the campaign. 

After the success of Bears [below] last year, what was the brief the client approached you with this time?

AF: They wanted us to continue the theme of emotional stories of family togetherness at Center Parcs. Why change a winning formula?

The Forest is Your Playground has a similar feel to it, tonally, as Bears but with focus more on the positive aspects of family time; what was the thinking behind that?

AF: Last year we told a problem/solution story of how modern life pulls families apart, and Center Parcs puts them back together. This year we really wanted to focus on the positive possibilities of what you and your family might do together at Center Parcs. How you might bond together as a gang in the most magical way imaginable.

Once you’d landed on the idea with the different creatures, what was the process in designing how they look (who got involved and how long did it take to nail it)?

AF: That’s all down to the talents of our friends at ETC and The Line. For the second year in a row, they threw their epic skills at the project and designed some stunning characters. It was a very collaborative project with Eric [Lynne], the director and ourselves, but actually we got to early versions of the characters pretty early and it was a relatively smooth process. 

How has the animation been incorporated?

SJ: One of the most important things is the feeling that these characters exist in the real world even though they are figments of the family’s imagination. To do this there are a few factors we needed to get right.

We wanted to create characters that were made of real-world elements so we could recreate them in CG. One of the things we did is have on-set references that matched each of the characters so that the artists at ETC would have something to match to. 

We made our own small, pink, furry toys and mocked up a rusty robot out of an old bin and pieces of wood that could be placed in each of the scenes that the characters appeared in. Then it was down to the skill of the artists to recreate that look inside the computer.

What was the inspiration for the creatures?

RK: The robot needed to feel like it was made from a boy’s imagination, something visceral, so objects that he could have seen in the forest or at home in his dad’s shed. 

The forest creature was something magical that the girl would have dreamed up. We referenced a lot of creatures of folklore that maybe could have existed in a parallel world. One of the key features was the pink and green fur which was linked to the colour of the girl’s clothing. 

The whale started out as a real whale of the forest that looked like a whale but had references to the bark and earthiness of the trees. Early on, one of our designers came up with a beautiful concept which took it a stage further and added in flowers and grasses onto the back, with moss hanging off the tail and face. 

The leaf monster was a lot harder to design because we knew a lot would come from the way he moved, and we knew that he just really needed to relate to the dad.

What were the main challenges in designing the creatures?

RK: We felt the need for a diversity of vision for the different creatures. They're the product of different family member's imaginations, so it made sense for the development to be split between concept artists.

This was key to getting it right early on so that when we started to build them in CG we knew what we were trying to achieve. A lot of time was spent referencing real creatures, objects and materials that the designers could use to create the characters from.

Why was Eric Lynne the perfect director to take on this job?

AF: Eric immediately had great empathy for the emotional potential of the story. He knew that if the viewer didn’t care about the family, then they wouldn’t care about the animated characters. So, he put huge focus into casting and performance to give us a basis to build on.

What was the most challenging aspect of putting this campaign together?

AF: Telling a multi-layered, multi-dimensional story, with real and imaginary characters in only 50 seconds in a way that would feel simple and uplifting.

How much time was taken over the animation? 

SJ: It was 1,200 hours of animation alone. And there was a whole team of CG ops who were modelling/texturing/rigging/adding fur/lighting/adding FX on top of these hours.