CHICAGO, IL – What could tempt Poseidon to ditch his trident for a spoon or give Medusa a good hair day? Greek Gods Yogurt, naturally! That’s the premise behind the new social media 2-spot campaign created by Chicago agency SRW, known for their work with food brands. Animation/VFX studio Calabash – led by Executive Producer Sean Henry and Creative Director Wayne Brejcha – brought the ancient deities to life for the occasion, while Darren Weninger of MK Films delivered the luscious tabletop food photography.
Click to watch the Medusa and Poseidon spots.
“Calabash just gets it,” SRW Creative Director Shawn Gauthier, says. “Their reel showed off their killer comedic timing, but what sold me was the rough animation they shared in our first meeting — it nailed the idea and I knew we had to work together. They took every bit of feedback, no matter how impossible, and made it better, adding genius little details that made our 6-second stories feel sharp, funny, and somehow never rushed. Working with Sean, Wayne, and the whole Calabash team was an absolute honor.”
When SRW first presented the concept, the tongue-in-cheek visual humor resonated with Sean Henry and the Calabash crew.
“The agency had a distinct vision of these grumpy gods suddenly rejoicing when the yogurt appears,” says Henry. “Our Herculean task was to imbue these marble statue figures with convincing personality. SRW gave us a lot of room to explore creatively, and we enjoyed the collaboration as we zeroed in on the character models, the staging, and the timing.”
Testing The AI Waters:
The spot afforded some experimentation with AI tools. Calabash tried various AI programs to assist the animation but found the technology still too green to rely on extensively.
“We were able to use AI in the animation of Poseidon’s facial expression, and had hoped to do the same for Medusa,” Henry says, “but no AI tools could give us the control we needed. It would usually try to superimpose real-looking eyes and mouth onto the stone statues, which just looks creepy. The AI was also not able to generate realistically animated snakes for Medusa’s hair. Those interwoven shapes would just morph and swirl into useless abstractions. Once we understood AI’s current limitations, we abandoned it in favor of a more standard CG animation workflow.”
Grappling with AI’s limitations wasn’t the only challenge Calabash faced. Unforeseen obstacles included the scarcity of actual antiquity-era sculptures of Medusa to refer to.
“The few in existence were not quite right for the character we sought to portray,” Henry says. “We ended up creating our own original CG sculptures of both Medusa and Poseidon to work from.”
The final creative piece was director Darren Weninger’s expertise in food photography, which aided the production immensely.
“We explored the option of CG models for the product elements, but needed to capture such subtle properties of yogurt and wet fruit in motion, and in close-up shots, that only photography can achieve,” Henry adds. “The shoot was surprisingly complex and required careful planning. Darren and the crew at MK Films delivered such delicious food shots that you know Poseidon and Medusa aren’t faking it!”
