The Amul Butter girl gets a 3D makeover

She is the iconic girl in a red polkadotted dress with a wideeyed look and an impish smile She is mostly seen looking down at us from billboards but now she has got a novel avatar In a new television commercial TVC that went on air earlier this month the Amul girl is seen frolicking around on a boat and a tree house in a fantasy land with kids urging them to team up butter with pasta noodles and corn What makes this ad unique however is that this is the first time the moppet has transformed from 2D twodimensional to 3D threedimensional One can view the ad without the traditional 3D glasses Interestingly in a firstofitskind the TVC featuring the 3D mascot will be aired in cinema halls in the coming months Kailash Surendranath founder of Kailash Picture Company Pvt Ltd who directed the commercial says ldquoWe got a twofold brief from the company First to show that kids are adding Amul butter to their food and secondly to present the mascot in 3D animation and progress from the 2D illustrated character that we all know We needed to do this without losing her original character which was the tricky partrdquo Since the background was supposed to be animated the film was shot with children against a green screen set with real props and food Later Surendranath and his team listed the differences between the original hoarding design and the 3D computer graphics and sent it to Toonz Animation that did the background and compositing of the moppet The new television commercial shows the Amul mascot in a 3D avatar with kids in a fantasy land urging them to team up butter with pasta noodles and corn Surendranath says ldquoThe threedimensional look is more realistic and contemporary If you notice closely in the ad the girl looks more rounded It is essentially a computergenerated 3D model that has a 360degree view and looks like a reallife figure as compared to a 2D figure that is onedimensional Also when you work on a 3D model you have to work on it and the background separately So I shot with the children against a plain green background while Toonz Animation worked on the background and the mascotrdquo According to Hari Verma chief creative officer Toonz Animation the initial challenge was to transfer the mascot from 2D artwork into 3D space without losing the cuteness of the art ldquoWe did a lot of research in this aspect We did various versions with perfect features In the process we realised that the girl didnrsquot have an evident nose in the 2D art as the upper lip was curved in such a way that it looked like her nose Though the ad is on air right now we had been working on it for nearly a year We used the scenes shot with the green screen as our layout for animation and compositing With plans to screen the TVC in cinema halls we now need to do the stereo conversion and get the whole ad rendered in high resolution 3Drdquo Former head of Board of Control for Cricket in India Jagmohan Dalmiya threatened to sue Amul after this campaign in 199899 Rahul da Cunha managing director and creative head DaCunha Communications the agency behind the butter brandrsquos ads says that the TVC is in sync with the brandrsquos strategy of constantly evolving with the times From a blacktowhite fuller avatar to a coloured slimmer form from the godfearing tiny tot to the mischievous moppet making witty repartees the mascot has been undergoing a transformation consistently ldquoAfter 50 years we thought of introducing her to the 3D format and transfer her to another medium the small screen Our biggest concern was how would she look in the commercial Also in the hoardings she comments on daily events in a tongueincheek manner Over there the focus is not on the product but on what she is saying In the TVC the emphasis is on the food and the kids We canrsquot adopt her hoarding avatar in the TVC as the events that she comments on are timebound Whatrsquos hot today might be dead tomorrowrdquo Turning back time The Amul mascot was created in 1966 by cartoonist Eustace DeSouza and Sylvester da Cunha founderchairman of DaCunha Communications The brief given to them was to appeal to children Since that time the media wasnrsquot as vast as it is today the ads were limited to hoardings and were mostly productrelated Thatrsquos when da Cunha senior thought of the line lsquoUtterly butterly deliciousrsquo The first hoarding that da Cunha senior and Fernandes created said lsquoGive us this day our daily bread with Amul Butterrsquo The mascot was first used for Amul butter But in recent years in a second wave of ad campaign for other products she has also been used for other products like ghee and milk The first hoarding developed by Sylvester da Cunha founderchairman of DaCunha communications and cartoonist Eustace DeSouza in 1966 In 1970s the need to widen the mascotrsquos horizons prompted da Cunha senior to introduce current events on the hoardings At that time the mascot sported a fuller figure Now she sports a slightly slimmer avatar to appeal to the kids Things changed when Rahul da Cunha started working on the campaign in 1993 The mascot started commenting on current affairs in a more tongueincheek manner and the billboards became more edgy Explaining the reason da Cunha says ldquoFrom the rsquo90s politics became personalityoriented Political leaders such as Laloo Prasad Yadav Mulayam Singh Yadav Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani emerged as interesting characters in peoplersquos minds Likewise film stars and television became largerthanlife for the common man Earlier actors were only relegated to film magazines But gradually the media started focusing on cinema and television These events became significant for the Amul girl to comment on Also today the Indian society has become very glamour oriented Case in point is our fascination with the new Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuraman Rajanrdquo The famous hoarding on then Chief Minister of Bihar Laloo Prasad Yadav after the fodder scam in 1996 From 1960s to rsquo90s da Cunharsquos ad agency worked on one hoarding every month The number increased to one hoarding per week since 1993 But of late they have been working on five to six hoardings every week Da Cunha attributes it to Amulrsquos presence on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook In fact the Facebook page which was set up last year now has 15 million followers Every day the page gets as many as 40007000 likes ldquoOur presence on social networking sites has increased our readership and viewership Online our target audience is in the age group from 18 to 25 As their attention span is shorter now and they are very active on Twitter and Facebook we get constant feedback from them Also over the past two years there are too many things happening on a daily basis In fact the smallest of things is reported widely For instance reams of newsprint and onair coverage are dedicated to Shah Rukh Khan slapping Shirish Kunder Such an incident becomes a topic to comment on for the mascotrdquo All about team work The brains behind the witty oneliners comprise da Cunha writer Manish Jhaveri and illustrator Jayant Rane The trio has been working successfully as a team since the last two decades Apart from discussing each morning about the events that can serve as good topics on Monday mornings Jhaveri and da Cunha take stock of probable events that can be highlights of the week Da Cunha explains ldquoLast week both of us discussed about how Narendra Modi being announced as Bharatiya Janata Partyrsquos Prime Minister candidate Shreesanth facing a probable life ban due to the spot fixing scam Anant Chaturdashi and the juvenile getting only three year imprisonment sentence in the Nirbhaya rape case were significant events Then we took a call on which topic would appeal in which part of the country Ganpati visarjan is a huge draw in Maharashtra Modi is a hot topic in Gujarat and cricket scam is significant in Jaipurrdquou00a0 In 2011 when the Amul billboard ridiculed Satyamrsquos then chairman Ramalinga Raju after the Rs 7000 crore scam Satyam board demanded a written apology from Amul However there are also several issues such as international politics and Hollywood news which serve as relevant topics only for social networking sites Case in point being the recent campaign featuring US President Barack Obamarsquos response to the Syria crisis which got a favourable response on Facebook but didnrsquot make it to hoardings across the country Apart from the clever puns what strikes home is the strong cross referencing that is a hallmark in every hoarding Jhaveri juxtaposes two seemingly different ideas in one line thanks to his vast knowledge of popular culture including Bollywood films epics such as Ramayana and the Mahabharata and Hinglish Likewise Ranersquos illustration of personalities caught in a fix drives home the point of the oneliners effectively Till a couple of years ago the illustration work on the hoardings was a painstaking job After Rane painted the image on an 8x8 inch paper the artwork would be sent to the contractor whose labourers would climb on scaffolding and replicate Ranersquos painting on mammoth hoardings Though Rane continues to draw it manually thanks to digital technology the image is scanned on computers and later turned into prints that finally take form on billboards The Amul hoarding making a tongueincheek comment on Trinamool Congress Chief Mamata Banerjee getting offended after a Jadavpur University professor circulated a picture spoofing her Controversies galore Though largely personalities highlighted in the hoardings take the campaign in the right spirit the Amul campaign has had its fair share of controversies In 2010 after then sports minister Suresh Kalmadi was arrested for his alleged involvement in the Commonwealth Games scam the campaign ran a hoarding that showed Kalmadi saying Maine kya khaya Angry supporters of the minister pulled down the hoarding in Pune and demanded that Amul render an apology Likewise in 2011 when the Amul billboard ridiculed Satyamrsquos then chairman Ramalinga Raju after the Rs 7000 crore scam with a notorious lsquoSatyam sharam scandalamrsquo Satyam board demanded a written apology from Amul failing which all their employees would stop using Amul products Despite the veiled threats none of the campaigns have ever been withdrawn Da Cunha says ldquoWe donrsquot sit on the fence we echo what the common man feelsrdquo A recent billboard on the escalating price of onions that is burning a hole in the common manrsquos pockets According to social commentator and Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Futurebrands India Ltd Santosh Desai the Amul mascot holds a significant place in Indian society ldquoApart from being the most endearing mascot we have ever seen in the country what works in her favour is the fact that she can make serious comments in a completely disarming way She enjoys a pivotal place in the Indian landscape because the nature of her comments makes news The new TVC is a step toward being in sync with the contemporary world The mascot has been constantly evolving rather than being stuck in a time warp and looking datedrdquo The chubby girl with the half ponytail frolicking in a red polka dotted dress truly epitomises the saying change is the only constant u00a0