Directed by William Barlett, Framestore Pictures produced this fully-CG commercial for eye care brand Optrex and advertising agency Havas London. Several departments at Framestore worked together to design and animate an incredibly detailed mechanical eye for the film.

The Optrex ProVision was the first project I've had the pleasure of working on since moving to Framestore. It being an out of the ordinary rig with lots of moving components meant that it was right up my street and I couldn't wait to get started. As the design hadn't been locked down it was key to build the rig in a way that would allow for lots of iterations. There was a lot of back and forward with the modelling team on this project to make sure that the design would work mechanically as well.

To ensure the rig could adapt to modelling changes quickly and to minimize the error of missing components in such a complicated system, I developed sanity functions that would scan the modelling scene, notifying me of any changes or additions. Other functions would then adapt those changes to make sure they were implemented in the rig build. Having this as an automated process made dealing with modelling and design updates a simple and straight forward one.

A retargeting script was written to transfer the previs animation created by William Barlett in Nuke onto the rig and animation scenes for each of the shots in Maya. With the previs already being approved by the client, only small animation tweaks where needed after the retargeting, saving lots of time.