Vilnius studio Symbiotic reteams with SAES Design House to wrangle a collection of striking CG fauna – including an octopus, tree frog, and emperor penguins – to showcase the features of the B!POD food preservation system.

AD Evaldas Česnavičius and animator/TD Almantas Vasiliauskas at Symbiotic: “One of B!POD’s slogans is ‘small and powerful’ and the red-eyed tree frog is the perfect illustration of this concept. While this mesmerizing creature can sit comfortably on your finger, it can also leap up to 20 times its body length.

“While the body rig was relatively straightforward, the eyes demanded exceptional attention to detail as the eyeballs re​​​​​​​tract deep into its skull, and its large, transparent eyelids fold neatly beneath the eyes. Bringing this to life required extensive use of blend-shape with targets from simulations, some clever scripting, a detailed bone structure, and plenty of biological references.
 

“The tentacle model was created procedurally with adjustable parameters such as sucker shape and tentacle length, allowing for easy customization as needed.”

 
“The powerful suckers of an octopus align well with the outstanding suction power of the B!POD and visually, the bottom part of the device resembles a pair of octopus suckers which helped bring the two ideas together.

“The tentacle model was created procedurally with adjustable parameters such as sucker shape and tentacle length, allowing for easy customization as needed. The animation was developed using a procedural rig combined with animation and simulation passes. Suction functionality was implemented using dynamic constraints created and controlled with VEX code.

“B!POD containers are also designed to withstand freezing cold. To represent that feature, we had an easy choice: the Imperial penguin, a specialist in extreme cold survival. Despite a tight deadline, we risked replicating vast numbers of penguins using a crowd system with simple behavior logic.”
 
 

 
Client: SAES Design House
Team: Marco Filippo Batavia, Ginevra Della Porta

Production: Symbiotic
Art director: Evaldas Česnavičius
Animator/Technical director: Almantas Vasiliauskas
Lighter/Shader: Evaldas Česnavičius
Frog modeler: Arminas Didžiokas
Poster typography: Vaidas Ainis Morkūnas