October 10th, 2008
We got a brief from TBWA\PHS Producer Elena Berger for an advertisement that would portray a lottery inside the television set. It was clear right from the start that this was a case for physics simulation to get a realistic feel of lottery balls bouncing.
The only real question was what kind of a mechanism should be built to get the balls moving the way we wanted to. Before long Jani Karvonen had come up with a bizarre assembly that rations the balls from above the camera, spins them through a funnel of a sort and bounces them across the screen. We're not quite sure whether he's patented the thing yet or not.
Piñata lottery machine
As you can see, there are actually a lot more balls than the real lottery count of 39. We had to check frame by frame that two or more balls with the same number were never visible at the same time. The guys at Veikkaus are understandably quite precise with that sort of thing.
Mika Rantala fine tuned the machinery and physics with Jani and rendered and composited the final animation. "It was a fun and straightforward project.", says Mika. "It goes to show once again that a 3D-animation doesn't have to be Star Wars for artists to enjoy making it. And the client was very happy with the ad too."
Credits
Client: VeikkausAgency: TBWA\PHS
Creatives: Jouni Seppänen
Producer: Elena Berger