Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 15, 2018. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The goal of the almost two-minute commercial “The Easter Surprise – #TheRealEasterBunny” was: viral. An ambitious undertaking, but the idea conceived by the Jung von Matt agency—to finally answer the question of why, of all things, a rabbit brings the eggs at Easter—combined with the animation work of Mill+ managed to meet the high expectations. After its release in March last year, the video achieved around six million views on YouTube and Facebook in just two days. To date, the YouTube video has been viewed 12 million times.
The animated film was part of a 360-degree campaign for the Netto supermarket chain at Easter. At the same time as the film release, the cute rabbit adorned all brochures and print advertisements, various prize-draw promotions ran, and children could download colouring pictures and the story as a children’s book. The bunny was even available as a cult life-size cut-out, which older generations may still know from Bravo magazine.
Miniature Set Shoot
One secret of the film’s success is its lovingly detailed realisation with physically built sets. Dan Betteridge was production designer on the project, while Kate Mcconnell was responsible for model making. After an extended concept phase, a team of 20 people created the set in one of London’s largest studios within a period of two weeks.
All objects such as school blackboards, tables and carpets were made to scale in miniature at animal size, and small glowing lights were integrated into the lamps and mushrooms. The moss and trees in the forest set consisted of real plant parts, which made heating impossible during the shoot because everything would otherwise have died. Overall, the real set was 15 by 20 metres in size. In addition to the three shooting days with a 30-person crew, several rehearsal days were necessary for the workflow and lighting.
Animated Figures with Character
All the characters—the chicken, the rabbit father, the Easter bunny and his schoolmates—were also present on set as real props. But only as references, since the Mill+ team replaced them with animated 3D models during post-production. Seamless integration of the full-CG characters into the live-action backgrounds was crucial. To ensure this, the Mill+ artists designed an extremely detailed storyboard based on several early concept drawings.
Despite the film’s short running time, each of the CG animals was to display its own personality. The animation team defined this by meticulously refining every detail in facial expressions and gestures. Autodesk Maya software was used for this. The scope of the project and the abundance of characters resembled those of a normal short film.
The film was directed by Jimmy Kiddell of Mill+. For him, “The Easter Surprise – #TheRealEasterBunny” was a very special project: “I love old fairy tales and watch lots of animated feature films together with my children. When Jung von Matt sent us this quirky script, I knew that we could make something very special out of it. The fast-paced story allowed the team to process a wide range of emotions in the animation. The rendering and compositing also presented many technical challenges, which the team met with great enthusiasm.”
The numerous set details and the subtle animations of the CG characters also presented the colour-grading team with several challenges. Head colourist Seasmus O‘Kane explains: “It was crucial that our work did justice to the mood and atmosphere of this fairy-tale world so that we could evoke empathy in the viewer. We were already working on the colour design before the characters were integrated into the backplates, so the final result represents our refined ideas, which we were able to develop before the actual colour-grading process.”
