| Title | KLEENEX COTTONELLE - HEART OF BORNEO |
| Brand | KIMBERLY CLARK |
| Product / Service | KLEENEX COTTONELLE |
| Category | A10. Animation |
| Entrant | METHOD STUDIOS Melbourne, AUSTRALIA |
| Entrant Company | METHOD STUDIOS Melbourne, AUSTRALIA |
| Advertising Agency | J. WALTER THOMPSON Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
| Production Company | METHOD STUDIOS Melbourne, AUSTRALIA |
| Name | Company | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Kimberley Finsten | Kimberly Clark | Marketing Manager, Bath & Towel, Family Care Division |
| Dominique Chandler | Kimberly Clark | Marketing Sector Leader, Family Care |
| Simon Langley | J. Walter Thompson, Sydney | Executive Creative Director |
| Cat Wealleans | J. Walter Thompson, Sydney | Senior Account Director |
| Milly Hall | J. Walter Thompson, Sydney | Group Account Director |
| Celia Garforth | J. Walter Thompson, Sydney | Senior Planner |
| Gerhard Myburgh | J. Walter Thompson, Sydney | Associate Creative Director |
| Andrew Allsop | J. Walter Thompson, Sydney | Senior Copywriter |
| Leesa Kahn | J. Walter Thompson, Sydney | Broadcast Producer |
| Richard Swan | Method Studios Australia | Director |
| Sigi Eimutis | Method Studios Australia | Head Of VFX - Commercials |
| Steven Kerswell | Method Studios Australia | Senior VFX Producer - Commercials |
| Emily Nelson | Method Studios Australia | Design Producer |
| Nils Gleissenberger | Method Studios Australia | CG Supervisor |
| Alan Do | Method Studios Australia | CG Creature Lead |
| Brian Doecke | Method Studios Australia | Lead Character Animator |
| Christian Sherriff-Smith | Method Studios Australia | CG Environment Lead Artist |
| Pat Da Cunha | Method Studios Australia | CG Environment Artist |
| Kim Tobin | Method Studios Australia | Compositor |
| Dave Edwards | Method Studios Australia | Compositor |
Kimberly Clark, makers of Kleenex Cottonelle, partnered with the World Wild Life Fund to donate a portion from every sale of the Cottonelle product, to help in the reforestation initiative underway in Borneo. From deep within the soul of a mother orang-utan, the camera travels out from her eye where we see her sitting high in a tree within the forests of Borneo, cradling her baby. She looks at her surrounding environment and sees bare patches of forest that were up until recently, littered with towering majestic rainforest trees and lush undergrowth. We finish the film to see what can be done, and what is being done, by groups of individuals, with the assistance of willing organizations, in planting and helping the forest regenerate, and therefore giving the native wildlife hope for a brighter future.
We had 10 weeks to create, animate and integrate a truly believable adult orang-utan and its baby, into an equally plausible CG forest environment. But on top of that, we had to convey emotion in a very short time from an animal that is not being asked to do that much, simply perch high in the fork of a tree. Pulling the camera out through the eye meant that the detail and the resolution of the eye and face had to be extremely high. If it wasn’t, we’d lose the audience before we even had the chance to connect. The textures for the eyes alone were tiled at 4,000 lines of resolution. Then came the subtleties of the eye and face movements. We built a specialized face rig that didn’t so much manipulate bones as rigs generally do, but instead, moved the muscles and skin in and around the eyes, and mouth. As such, we opted for detailed key frame animation from highly skilled animators to create the emotion required. The forest was originally to comprise cleared sections of land, then trees would be seen to re-generate through the use of CG animation, but towards the end of production, this technique gave way to a more subtle ground cover re-growth instead. Even so, with around 16 individual species of CG trees and shrubs, and well over 100,000 digital trees in the final shot alone, the forest environment was a huge undertaking for us, especially given the length of the shots.