COOP Tsch Tsch

CG Bear animation

Postoffice worked on the VFX and grading for this ad in the COOP summer campaign “Tsch Tsch”. It shows 2 guys camping outside in the 80’s. One of them scrambles to grab his camera and just manages to capture a bear approaching their campsite looking for food. The other guy then chases away the bear by yelling “tsch tsch”, Coop’s legendary tagline.

CG bear

CG bear animation

To create this effect, the VFX team created a CG bear from scratch. They started with finding reference to narrow down the options that were possible to find in Swiss wilderness. Then those options were discussed with Director Jon Barber and the creatives at the agency. The team then followed the reference as closely as possible to create a bear that’s realistic. They delved down into anatomy books to build up the CG bear anatomically correct. They made the bones, muscles and fat according to real life specifications to make sure that when the bear moves it’s all looking realistic. Postoffice VFX then used their in-house fur tools to make the nice fluffy bear fur. Using physically accurate simulations they were able to simulate the muscles, fat and fur for every frame of the ad which adds so much to the realism. The amazing animation was precisely done too, looking at hours of reference of how bears move and roar.

Grading in Amsterdam

The grade for the whole campaign was done by our Senior-colourist Patski. She delved deep into the looks of period footage like america’s funniest home videos and other references to get a look that instantly resonates with audiences. We only have 10 seconds to tell this story, so the viewer needs to be in that world from frame 1. You can feel the compression that those home video camera’s had back then from the washed out colors and the heavy highlights. The footage went through multiple stages to get the look, both in VFX and grading.  Her grade also brought out the best of the CGI. Having grade in the same facility as the VFX department at Postoffice gives us the advantage of having these 2 work together perfectly.