"MILK-O"

                    From Joan Dunn

I'm sure most of you have seen the very clever T.V. ad. with the
cheery milkman and the dancing bottles. There is a programme
running at the moment called How It's Done. This shows how the
various stunts are made and also includes a piece on how the
advert with the milk bottles was created. As this includes some
computer graphics, I thought it might be of interest.

The team were lucky to find just the right location, a real street
with a winding path between the houses. They first made a number
of drawings to tell the story. Then the milkman came down an empty
path and did his conversation with imaginary bottles. This took
five days to complete. Now they had to design the bottles.

This was done on the computer by drawing a line and rotating it to
give the shape of the bottle, neck and top.

They then needed movement and first tried the Disney approach,
squash, stretch and flex. This looked as though the bottles were
made of rubber and wasn't right. So the settled for a jaunty side
to side hop, seven hops per second.

The computer was then used to colour up the bottles and simulate
all the writing, reflections and shadows. Now they had to put the
bottles into the scene with the actor.

First they had the empty background, then the coloured dancing
bottles.  Thirdly a black and white guide which cuts a hole in the
background for the bottles to appear in. Next similar holes for
the shadows of the bottles. All four parts were then put together
... result ... MILK SHAKE. Very clever stuff!





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