KISS M&Ms Campaign Image Creator Speaks

NewTek recently conducted an interview with William Vaughan, animator director at Splashlight (and former LightWave 3D evangelist) about his recent work on the KISS M&Ms campaign:

NewTek: Who was this image created for?

William Vaughan: The illustration was created for BBDO Worldwide's Inner M&M campaign, which runs in magazines worldwide. In the past, Splashlight created M&M characters of sportscasters Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson for a Super Bowl-themed advertisement. They also created M&M characters of country music stars Brooks and Dunn.

NewTek: How long did it take to create the artwork?

William Vaughan: It took about a week to model the characters and their props, and another week for lighting and surfacing. The details in the boots and guitars took the longest to model, as it was important to capture every detail. As usual, we used subdivision modeling to keep the polygon count as low as possible, both for rendering speed and maximum flexibility. We used another month for revisions involving both LightWave and Photoshop.

NewTek: How long was the approval process?

William Vaughan: There were probably two dozen rounds of revisions, which is fairly common for assignments like this one. We worked from a sketch provided by the agency that showed each character's general pose and position, but many elements changed along the way. There were differing opinions about whether a vertical or horizontal orientation would work best, so we created both. There was uncertainty about which band members should be represented, as two of the original band members had been replaced over the years. After several rounds of modifications, there was the last-minute addition of a stage, to make the image more vertical. The art directors at BBDO scrutinized every detail, magnified well beyond the intended print size before the image was shown to the band for final approval.

Read the entire interview from NewTek.