Croaking about Coffy Bite

The Skinny

The idea was to carry forward the Coffee-Toffee argument between two frogs – Leo and Dino who emote and have human-like qualities. Prime Focus brought in the big guns for its work on the latest Coffy Bite commercial in India. Michael Fink, the noted Academy Award winning VFX veteran, and president of VFX Worldwide for Prime Focus, was brought in to direct the commercial, a character animation piece which sees two CGI frogs vying for a bite of the delicious coffee toffee.

Fink came to the table with some impressive credentials. Not only did he win the Academy Award for his work on The Golden Compass, he has also been responsible for some of the most memorable effects sequences to come out of Hollywood in the last thirty years, from Batman Returns to X-Men, and for the seminal CG animated polar bear commercial for Coca Cola. Leading from India, was Merzin Tavaria, lead visual effects supervisor who worked in conjunction with Michael and team on the commercial.

The Production

The primary objective was to integrate these characteristics and emotions whilst keeping the look of Dino and Leo authentic. The Prime Focus team began by studying a huge number of different species of frogs from all around the world. After creating various iterations, the team put together almost 30 blend shapes for each frog in order to facilitate their action, emotion and dialogue delivery.

The main challenges:

• The two frogs needed to be distinguishable from one another with different appearances.

• The frogs needed to emote, and one had to seem sluggish whilst the other one was snappy.

• The frogs needed to interact with a human-like attitude, yet still maintain the essential characteristics of a frog.

Animating the frogs was quite a task because the Prime Focus team had to make the frogs converse and interact with each other. The first stage was layout, as the frogs had to be placed in the live action environment. The review process was completed along with Michael Fink in LA through video conferencing and with review software. The review process worked very smoothly due to the hi-definition technology available at Prime Focus and the team received feedback on the shots, literally frame by frame.

The Post

Sixteen artists worked together to deliver the commercial within a six-week production period, leveraging on the time difference between Los Angeles and India to ensure the most efficient workflows. This project required Prime Focus to deploy its Global Digital Pipeline business model in order to ensure the best quality delivery using its international talent base and reach.

The product window was also unique in this commercial as the product is featured in the middle of the commercial in a whirlpool of yummy coffee and toffee.

Texturing was equally challenging, as the team could not make the frogs slender. But they were mandated to keep their wet look to match the concept and the characteristics. So the team extensively used the process of sub surface scattering in Maya to get the realistic feel, which made it visually appealing and acceptable. The same process was used to achieve the wet look of the frogs skin, which gave a realistic feel and made the skin look visually appealing and acceptable.

The challenge was to match the environmental lighting and blend with frogs in the environment that was shot earlier. The team used the HDRI process in lighting in order to create an exact blend between the frogs and the live action plate. Prime Focus is India’s leading visual entertainment services group offering a comprehensive spectrum of services, including visual effects, digital film lab, telecine, editing, motion control and high definition production. The Prime Focus ‘world sourcing’ business model and ‘Global Digital Pipeline’ allows clients to access: world-class creative talent and technical solutions.