Brief Explanation

As one of Australia's most recognised mascots, Louie the Fly has been the face of Mortein pest control for over half a century. A villain with a reputation for charm, Louie's longevity and timeless appeal continues to define the brand. The production 3D team developed the “Locked Out” scenario for the iconic gang - Louie, Cockie, Mozzie and introducing an all new bug, Spider for Mortein. “Locked Out” saw long-term collaborators, Director Phil Meatchem and VFX Supervisor Ron Roberts reunited to bring the Australian icon to life. As Louie’s adventures get more intricate, the visual style keeps moving forward with energetic 3D animation. The essence of Louie’s cheeky verve has remained unchanged since his inception in 1962.

Creative Execution

Intricate character modelling, texturing, rigging techniques were developed and honed by the animation team on Mortein’s “Locked Out”. Shader development meant that the characters were render with believable surface textures. The insects are all caricatures, and therefore designed as ‘creatures with character’. Since they are based on real insects, the objective was to convey a balance between the qualities of a real fly and an emoting cartoon character Lead animator Andrew Kimberley created rigs for the cockroaches, spider and the mosquitos, rebuilding them to allow better integration of moves like squash and stretch and integrate their outfits. The cockroaches for example, at times needed to drop on all six legs and scuttle along in a realistic manner, which also meant their stomachs were pulled up off the ground. But when they stand up like humans, their heads change angle to the body considerably and we let their tummies out to look more slouchy. The built rig extended to both sets of activities, with flexibility for animatable shape change depending on body attitude. Additional 3D looks included the Mortein ‘barrier’– a curved-glass like effect - representing protection against insects - distorted the image slightly and has a red ‘Mortein’ glow where it contacts the ground. It appears as a giant dome over the family’s house in a very wide shot, as well as down at the edge at Louie’s scale. At first, the team built a CG glass dome and tried to apply a refractive index to it. But the distortions proved hard to control and produced distracting results. Instead they used a displacement map in the image itself, created in Nuke, to introduce the distortions. For an integrated animation project such as this one, the team mostly used Maya, and tracking in 3D Equaliser. Some assets like furry characters are rendered in Houdini with Mantra, with compositing done in Flame. This created a realism of surface quality and organic complexity for the characters which was the added detail gained by rendering and compositing in HD. Because glow device symbolises Mortein’s main function, it has to work at all scales. “In order to communicate this barrier idea quickly in a few seconds, the viewer has to be able to recognise that red Mortein glow in every shot,” Ron said. “We completely cheated the scale so that you always got the contact glow and some of the clear bubble looks in each shot. Otherwise the same glow seen in the wide shots would have filled the whole frame in the close-ups. To help make the 3D environment look similar enough to the live action world to allow intercutting, the team did as much much in camera as possible by doing a focus shift to get better depth of field for example. Shallow depth of field was the trick used to evoke the feeing of looking into a little world. With 3D/2D integration, the mood of the lighting was set by shooting the trucks as live action.