The film depicts a story, based on the real life migration of a Scandinavian robin, of a young, spritely CG bird and his epic journey across vast landscapes, into the garden of a young girl, who eagerly anticipates the annual return of the festive creature at Christmas time.

The robin overcomes many difficulties along the way form a falcon attack, to a lighthouse storm before being picked up by a trawler.

Our 2D and 3D teams carefully crafted a fully photo-real CG robin full of personality to ensure the viewer emotionally connects with every step of its journey.

The robin is finally seen sharing a mince pie with another fellow robin as the girl’s family looks on lovingly before enjoying their Christmas dinner.

The team pushed the boundaries of visual effects over the course of a five month period to create a 100% CG photoreal robin, portraying a heart-warming story of migration.

This large-scale project was ambitious and technically complex, allowing the team to showcase never before seen CG and VFX detail through the use of bespoke tools.

The challenge was to create a robin with an unlimited range of movement and an ability to perform in any shot throughout constantly changing environments and interactions.

The team photo-scanned a real robin skeleton from references, which was used to recreate the internal bone structure of the robin.

The team also crafted a bespoke, in-house feather tool, to create over 5000 unique feathers to make up the robin’s body.

The system was so sophisticated the team were able to control every detail; the number of barbs, length, clumping, fluff, width and bend of the feathers.