Ebookers / Eboo

The artistic challenge in creating Eboo lay in the fact that although his appearance is realistic, he needed to come across as a friendly and helpful human personality as opposed to a wild animal. “Striking a natural balance between an appealing character and a realistic creature was challenging,” says Freefolk 3D artist Jansen McCord. “We overcame this by tuning the density of the fur to be more expressive, and brightening the eyes to allow for more emotion.”

A team of five 3D artists and one animator worked for one month to deliver the Eboo asset using Mari, Houdini, and Maya with Yeti and Arnold. “In order to keep the creature workflow focused inside one package, we tied the groom created in Yeti to an nHair simulation rig, scripting the caching process for the fur to be used later in lighting,” says Jansen.

VFX Producer and Freefolk’s Head of Production Cheryl Payne commented, “The project came to us via Leo Burnett, with whom we worked very successfully throughout 2021, particularly on the Skoda Enyaq Robots spot. It was wonderful to reunite with some of the team as well as meet new faces. We hadn't worked with Adam Gunser from Darling Films before so it's been great that this project has brought us together; it's always nice to meet and collaborate with directors we haven't had the pleasure of working with before. Hopefully, our Eboo will get the chance to go to some new and exciting destinations in 2022!”