The spot follows the extraordinary journey of a rather unusual CG cloud that like Guinness is 'Made Of More'. We were brought in at a very early stage to help develop the cloud as the central character in this uplifting story. The clever cloud interacts with the world around it, flying over skyscrapers and in between buildings and is the result of a very controlled workflow across our departments.

The VFX team’s 3D department began by developing the cloud in Houdini as it meant they were then able to build their whole setup from scratch and tailor it to the way they wanted it to work. The setup needed to be flexible as every shot presented a different challenge.The team had to strike a fine balance between giving the cloud a "character" both looks and animation wise, and also being careful not to take it too far out of the realms of what we are used to seeing clouds look and behave like.

The opening 3 shots were were built from scratch using no live action plates. They were created entirely in CG and were composited mainly in Nuke. It was a hugely challenging job from a 3D perspective as the cloud needed to look real before it got to 2D. In Flame and Nuke the 2D team then composited the CG to make sure it fit seamlessly in the beautifully shot backplates. In shots where the shadow of the cloud was seen the team created a version of the shot in Flame which was relit to be entirely in shadow. They then used mattes from 3D to wipe between the natural and shadowed plates to achieve the final result.

One particularly tricky shot was the "squeezing through the buildings" shot. After a lot of experimentation in 3D, we eventually hit upon a 2D solution to execute this shot. Two clouds which had been rendered for different shots were manipulated, combined and reanimated in Flame to achieve the desired effect.

After creating a successful and active cloud, further touches were required. Other CGI post work had to be done to give the setting a realistic touch. CGI seagulls, smoke, fire, ventilation system on the rooftop, pigeons, even a few extra buildings. Matte paintings were also used to place the fire sequence into the heart of the city along with extensive augmentation of the scale and ferocity of the fire in Flame.

The VFX team’s collaborative atmosphere allowed the Colourist team to fineness a grade which could be viewed by the 2D and 3D teams, but remained apart from the intensive compositing and character animation process. The final application of grade to the finished files therefore became a seamless process that produced no unexpected results despite the delicate balance of character and background.