Mom was directed by Steele's Brian Adler and called on the talents of the company's 3D division, including lead CG artist Jason Shulman and CG artists Michael White and Dave Jerrard.
The concept of the ad was to show what moms and their families would do with the extra time they save by shopping at Wal-Mart's pharmacies. Rather than shoot footage of families enjoying leisure-time activities, the decision was made to visualize such activities out of pills.
The spot opens on the new pharmacy logo as a blue raindrop gel cap falls through the frame, landing on the petal of a flower. It soon becomes clear that the flowers, a bumble bee and the raindrop are all CGI-animated pills. The pills come together to form a playground, a tennis match and finally an afternoon at the pool.
Steele's artists started the process by animating a series of tests for the agency. The experiments provided many examples of animated pills and lighting set-ups to determine the look and feel of different translucencies and textures of pills.The bee's flight was used to create a visual tour through the spot. The bee gives way to a bird and later a dragonfly of colorful pills that circles in the last scene and reveals the Wal-Mart logo.
The studio used NewTek LightWave, Alias Maya, Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, and Quantel's eQ on the project. Next Limit Technologies' Real Flow was used to create the fluid motion of pills pouring into a pitcher, resembling lemonade.