Approached by Dow, sponsors of the 2012 London Olympics we were tasked with recreating their Topiary Mascot - Hopeiary. Dow wanted to highlight their commitment to make the games more sustainable through use of their products and therefore needed the image we created to represent that. They wanted the soft green character to turn people's thoughts to fresh living things and so we aimed to make our CGI topiary leaves as realistic and natural as we possibly could. Lighting and carefully matched reflections were key in creating photo-real topiary. Our CGI 'Hopeiary' was rigged so that we could easily pose him allowing for much flexibility ion the range of images we could create. Our final image was rendered in super high resolution as it was displayed as a huge billboard at the Olympics, viewed by millions!
Photography by John Parker
The Mouth section was made clear with the subtle use of twigs to accentuate the key outlines so the face read easier, as the varied broken nature of the leaves made it hard to visibly show details.
