Clam promotes Triaminic’s new medicinal thin strips, and features an animated clam on the sea floor, suffering from cold symptoms. His mother tries to get him to take his medicine and after some hesitation, finds the new thin strips easy to swallow.
Hornet artists made all set pieces and characters by hand and created the undersea lighting and atmospheric effects in camera. The spot was shot using Canon Digital SLRs with Nikon lenses. Adobe After Effects was used for compositing air bubbles, which were actual acrylic spheres, photographed with real animated reflections.
Puppets were made from foam-latex with aluminum armatures. To give the set a deep sea feel, a distinct foreground was created, after which a semi-translucent fabric was used as a shroud between the foreground and background, creating the illusion of depth and providing a surface for lighting effects. Additional effects included the use of a large sheet of plexi-glass as an upright multi-plane for animation of distant fish silhouettes, as well as projected light patterns, advanced frame-by-frame, for under water lighting. Motion control was used to program camera moves.
Hornet’s Peter De Seve designed the characters. The studio also produced Triaminic’s Spider spot using similar techniques.