'The copper rivets, the asymmetrical hand-sewn seams, the matchless classic appeal…'

With a stunner like the Levi's Copper Jeans, the ads undoubtedly had to match in beauty. Calling it a 'visual celebration of the craft and meticulous attention to detail' put into making Levi's Copper Jeans, BBH Asia Pacific brought in one of the best digital artist in the industry to conceptualise a series of print ads that would run throughout Asia-Pacific.

Print To Film

Meats Meier, named 'Maya Master' at SIGGRAPH 2003 and technical director of Hellboy, sculpted 3D copper female and male models made out of Levi's rivets, zippers and buttons.

Meier's creations were so aesthetically stunning, BBH creative director Todd Waldron, BBH art director Paul Downs and BBH copywriter Beth Ryan felt that translating what went on paper to what went on TV only seemed right.

Stop Motion Technique

Working within a budget not originally slated for a TVC was the first hurdle to overcome. Blackmagic Design creative director Damien Yang thus suggested not using 35mm but employ stop motion technology using digital stills instead.

"It's a blend of vintage and contemporary. Stop motion is characteristic and will fit in perfectly with the sepia tone of the print ads and the handcrafted button in the classic, stained colour as well as Meats' models which are futuristic," Yang said.

Indeed, the idiosyncratic feel of stop motion complemented the copper colour palette, resulting in an arresting and refreshing TVC that has enjoyed positive response from both research groups and industry folks.

'Evolution – Perfection Takes Time'

Moviola director Patrick Ong decided on an 'Evolution – Perfection Takes Time' theme when crafting the film. For this, he highlighted the main details of the jeans through a 'growing process'.

Meier's copper sculptures were given a new lease of life, which saw them 'growing' from a button that was likened to a seed – a solution which Blackmagic Design's head of design, Elena Ho, devised to tie the story together. Clad in the Copper Jeans, the sculptures then transformed into 'human' talents.

Ong commented: "This film encapsulates the mood of crafted humanness - the CGI copper man and woman are still 'human' in the way they wear the jeans and the way they move. An important part was to get the desired intensity and emotion, when their 'human' faces were first introduced, from a series of stills images… the main challenge remains in telling a photorealistic visual story with constraints, especially in terms of camera angles."

Crafted By Post Production

The 15-second spot may seem breezy but there were numerous creative challenges involved.

Extensive pre and post-production were required to recreate the print ads in motion. A detailed storyboard, conceived by Moviola and Blackmagic Design, kicked into action on a 6fps-shoot in Sydney with one of Australia's top photographers, Andreas Smetana.

In order to enhance realism in the visuals and create a graphically compelling TVC, the traditional editing-3D-compositing approach was tweaked and a non-linear workflow was adopted instead.

Post work commenced with 3D animation and editing being worked on simultaneously.

Extensive 3D details were called for to craft the story. Shots were also further rigged, from Meier's models, so that the extension of the models' movements looked more organic and believable.

The 3D elements were then composited with an initial offline sequence made up of digital stills and human model substitutes. Movements and timings were added on and the talents were rotoscoped to give way to the animated 3D models.

A second round in compositing was required, where the look of an old stop motion camera lens was replicated and finishing touches like rust, dust and imperfections were added.

With the new 3D sequences generated, the fundamental storyline was locked down to

the music composed by Jonathan Nah.

The near complete film was sent back to 3D environment for further lighting and texturing, then colour corrected to match the print execution. This enhanced photorealism required for the story, which made significant difference to the film.

"All in all, we had to simulate the spot to make it look seamless, as though it was shot on camera. And details like camera shakes and jerks were added to complement the stop motion, to give it that raw, old school look," commented Blackmagic Design VFX artist Keith Seah.

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