This month we launched our latest campaign for Aviva, heralding the final stage of the name change process the company have been communicating to customers since January 2009. Including TV, outdoor and radio, the campaign reassures people that whatever’s around the corner in 2010 and beyond, Aviva will be here in Ireland looking out for you.

To coincide with this official launch of the Aviva name, a brand new animation style was developed in conjunction with production company Screenscene to be used across all our 2010 Aviva advertising. Although you’re only seeing them now, months of work went in to creating this new Aviva world.

Here’s the technical part for anyone interested:

The animation was created entirely using 3ds Max 3D software.  The characters were first designed on paper, then realised in 3D. One of the most complex parts of the process was developing the look of the characters’ hair, using 3ds Max’s Hair and Fur plug-in. Each hairdo for a character could take three or four days to style.  The hair, once styled, had to be rendered separately to the characters and composited afterwards. The environments and props for each scene were then designed and built in 3D, and the render look was created using Chaos Groups’ V-ray, which has a really great global illumination render quality. 3ds Max was used to create a series of passes for each shot, a background layer, a fog pass, a depth pass and a dirt pass, then the main character render and the hair renders. These were combined in After Effects with a number of softening and diffuse effects to create the soft, warm feel of the finished animation.

The TV is supported by a heavyweight outdoor campaign that uses different calendar months to talk about the times in life you may need Aviva’s different categories of insurance. Radio ads highlighting some of the benefits available with Aviva’s motor and life assurance products complete the campaign, bringing home the brand promise of ‘looking out for you’ with some real offers for Aviva customers.