Great Western Railway Famous Five

Production Company: Friends Electric

Director: Pete Candeland

VFX Supervisor: Neil Riley

Animation, VFX and Post-Production: ETC

Art Direction & VFX: Rafael Martin, Dan May, and Justin Hutchinson-Chatburn

Painting Practice has once more had the pleasure in collaborating with Pete Candeland and Electric Theatre Collective, in creating the 1940's story book inspired ad campaign. The campaign is part of GWR's modernisation program, aimed to spark people's nostalgia for rail travel and focus on inspiring journeys. Rafael Martin, Dan May, and Justin Hutchinson-Chatburn worked with Pete and Neil in both Pre-Visualisation and Art Direction. The Process involved conceptualising environments, based on an original concept by Daniel Cacoult, 3D set and hand prop design, PreVis, through to delivery of animated digital matte paintings for all environments which feature in the commercial.

Pre-Production was launched late June, where the team were tasked with blocking out the environments and cameras for the Famous Five adventure. The characters travel from the city to the coastline where their beloved pet dog Timmy escapes along the way. Rafael, Dan, and Justin worked together in developing a look that captured the contrast of the busy bustle of the concrete jungle, to the quaint charm of western villages, to the wild beauty of the British countryside for Timmy to relish his way through. If that wasn't enough, Rafael then went on to create a catalogue of bespoke paintings that further enhance and compliment the commercials favour to western England, produced for the campaigns OOH, Digital, and Print.

We would like to say a very special thank you to the following artists, without whom, this project would not have been possible -

Justin Hutchinson-Chatburn, Sammy Khalid, Nandor Moldovan, Mike Shorten, Graeme McDougall, Jon Horsham, Katie Hallaron, Paul Dolan, Bruno Mayor,  Alessandro Chirico, Po Sing Chu, Carlos Nieto, Daniel Komosny, Juanma Sanchez-Cervantes, Pedro Bascon, and our summer intern Pauline Javelot.