Visa C3P0

The problem and the goal

With the football World Cup closing in, Visa commissioned AlmapBBDO for a Star Wars themed ad. A movie nerd dream come true: get paid to geek out over Star Wars characters.

The concept: "Everyone is welcome" - in beach football, also when you pay with Visa card.

BBDO art director Pedro Rosa supplied us a simple hand drawn illustration showing a clear direction of what he wanted to see. It showed a stormtrooper football team posing for a pre-game photograph with a standing out C3P0 bunched in.

I got to draw and model some C3P0 body parts: arms, torso and head. Divide and conquer strategy: other 6 team mates would tackle C3P0 leg, a stormtrooper helmet, stormtrooper arms and legs, background architectural structures, and sand.

Once completed, those parts were integrated by one person.

Meanwhile, one of the studio lead worked to create a generic puppet armature and 'rig' it, allowing us to pose the stormtroopers with those different stances.

A common first step when starting out a new illustration is to try and see the essence of original sketch (if any) and exploring references. Iconic as these characters are, we could find a trove of references - official and fan made.

Reference study

With the generous availability of reference images found on the internet, I was able to focus on every detail I wanted - understanding how each part connects, exploring tiny details that wouldn't necessary appear, but would (hopefully) add up to the final comp.

Background architectural elements

Although they were relocated to Rio de Janeiro (Copacabana beach) for the final render, the original brief asked for a photoshoot in Tattooine. 

Creating parts and adding scruff

Following what we have seen in the movies, Star Wars elements show history and realism displaying wear and tear around object edges. Those details are added later, though. Actually, modeling shiny-reflective surfaces is quite challenging.

Assembling the elements and posing

We delivered the image below, as a rough render, to check out camera angle, lighting and general composition. Then, touch base with both BBDO and Lucasfilm, who have very specific rules and ways of working.

After a short back and forth with the agency, we delivered the actual 3D working files with rigging, image textures, camera position, and overall composition elements in place.