Cotton Wool

Coke Siege Superbowl 2011

About a year ago, I received an email from a friend asking if I was available to join them in an exciting project that involved "an orc army and some nice hairy creatures". That description in itself was enough to make me drop everything and jump onboard. I soon found out that the project was for a Coke ad that would be screened during the Superbowl 2011!

As with most ads, this project moved along really fast. I had a couple of days to come up with as many sketches as I could for the characters, which was more realistic in style than what I have usually been contracted to do. The characters in the final ad do not look like any one particular drawing of mine, but I'd like to think some of my ideas may have shaped the look of the characters along the way. The entire project took only 3 months to complete, which was very impressive! I shall share some of my contributions on this project in the next few posts. For now, enjoy the full clip below...in FULL SCREEN.

Directors: Fx&Mat

Production Company: Nexus

Coke Siege Development 1

Orcs are some of my favourite things to draw. There is just so much fun in making something all ugly and fearsome. But they are also really difficult as far as originality is concerned. A lot of these drawings represent initial ideas that have yet been fully explored and developed.

Coke Siege Development 2

In the original script, there was a character named Balfour who was going to be the protagonist of the short film. He had a furry coat that protected him from the icy environment he lived in. There was also an idea that snowboard and ski-like contraptions that he had made by hand were his means of travelling quickly from one place to another. The brief for this character specifically called for a friendly and likeable character, "but absolutely NOT CUTE". I admit that in the midst of furious brainstorming, at least two VERY cute versions of Balfour managed to escape my vigilance and made it onto the pages. I shall have to post these another time.

Coke Siege Development 3

I developed basic facial expressions for some of the more promising Balfour concepts to give the directors a better sense of the character's personality. These are a handful of my personal favourites.

The Princess

'Out of the mansion walked the most beautiful princess Raja Rajawali had ever seen'.

This is one of the earliest sketches of Princess Sinara. It was highly romanticized; the princess looking like Italian beauty Sophie Loren flying out from a Spanish bell tower to meet her lover on a hot Mediterranean afternoon. Not quite South-East Asian, but it was the beginning of a vision that led to the following image.

Personality Is King

Designing Raja Rajawali was an interesting challenge as he needed to be portrayed as a clever king, one who could still command respect from his royal subordinates, and at the same time, provide the chuckles in the stories through his eccentric antics. He was very much a hero with all the characteristics of a sidekick. He had to be a lovable character that needed to appeal to the readers right away. I wanted him to be somewhat flawed in his design with a non-threatening appearance so the readers could relate to him easily. The decision to make him a little overweight felt just right (and this could be logically attributed to his fondness for all things durian). The following sketches came very close to how I had wanted the raja to 'feel' like. This would have been my choice of the king in a different universe.