In early 2014, Pepsi reimagined the story of Momotaro, one of Japan’s oldest folktales, an epic story about a young man called Peach Boy in English. In its two year run, Momotaro has become the most awarded commercial series in Japanese history for Pepsi, advertising agency, Yomiko/Tugboat, production company, Tohokushinsha Film Corporation and Alt.vfx.
Pepsi: Underdogs rool, ok?
Pepsi is now up to episode 4, which stars Jude Law is being used to promote Pepsi Strong. It’s already the series’ most feted, the applause due in no small part to Alt.vfx, who worked with Yomiko/Tugboat and Tohokushinsha to give the new film its impact.
The episode, directed by Kouichi Iguchi with Masakatsu Kasai on board as executive producer, tells the story of the origins of Oni – the iconic lava monster seen in previous episodes and designed by the creature team at Alt.vfx.
Alt’s executive producer, Takeshi Takada, has overseen the series from the beginning.
“With each new episode we have revealed more and more of the Oni and our technical approach has had to evolve with each iteration,” he commented.
“What began as a Softimage asset with Maya fluids for smoke 2 years ago has been rebuilt and improved over and over again and now is completely different asset now residing in Houdini. The existing high resolution textures were augmented with procedural textures to give an almost limitless resolution as the camera moved closer with every episode.”
Nick Angus, head of VFX, at Alt.vfx added, “We really raised the bar as we had never been this close to the character so we included rigid body rockfall simulations and extremely high resolution smoke simulations. Also for the first time we added fluid simulations to the close up shot to eject lava from his hot core. These extremely detailed and high polygon character simulations are very complex but the level of detail is very rewarding.”
The Ogre was another creature that was introduced for the first time in this commercial, created by Alt.vfx from a rough sketch by director, Iguchi.
The Ogre was always going to be chained up,” Angus explained, “so we needed to account for this in texturing, adding wounds and wearing in his skin layer. We studied the anatomy of animals and mutated and deformed it to make it original character in this special episode. The creature was then groomed with a fur layer and we had to figure out some new techniques to groom based on proximity of the fur to the chains that are tightly wrapped around him. The chains were also required to be simulated to hold the Ogre in place while he violently struggled against them.”
Effects such as saliva, dust particles and even wood splinters were added to really ground the Ogre in the plate photography.
Takada commented, “The Alt team has worked on this campaign for over two years, and we have been very proud to be part of the team that brought Momotaro to the small screen. We have tried to bring feature film quality FX and character design to the series and each episode has gotten bigger and more challenging. As one of Japan’s most famous fables the pressure was certainly there to make it special and authentic for the die-hard Momotaro fans.”