The Mill complete post on new Boots campaign

The Mill London have completed post on a new brand campaign for Boots.
The campaign, through Mother in London, features three spots; ‘teardrop’, 'translucent baby’ and ‘human plant’ – which shows a flower morph into a human being.
While all contain similar styling, The Mill used different effects in each spot, making each one individual.
For ‘human plant’ the challenge for The Mill team was morphing the series of silicon models in Flame to create the allusion of the human plant ‘growing’. The seamless fusion of body and leaf texture whilst maintaining the beautiful, natural feel of the piece was key.
To achieve the desired effects the directing team turned to more traditional animation methods to create the effect.
For ‘translucent baby’ the brief was to show the fragility of a baby’s skin: a baby’s skin is actually 30% thinner than an adult’s. In the spot we see a toddler holding her soft toy and playing in front of a large white light. The baby’s skin appears to be ‘see-through’ or transparent as she passes in front of the light. The Mill 3D team built a fully-functioning CG baby, which was then camera-tracked into each shot and animated (rotoscoped) to closely match the movements of the real baby. Based on initial lighting tests using a prosthetic 'jelly baby', the team developed the glowing skin colour which, when applied to the CG model resulted in a translucent effect when lit from behind.
In ‘teardrop’ we see a tear falling in reverse and traveling back up to the face and into the tear duct of a young boy. The teardrop was animated realistically in 3D and rendered using live footage for reference. The 3D team separated and deviated rays of light similar to a prism and created reflections and refractions on the CG teardrop. Four shots of real ‘tears’ from different takes were seamlessly joined with a tear built in Flame.
(GB)