'V' TVC

I designed the cockroaches for the 'V' energy drink brand at Fuel. Really fun project -- 3 tvc's featuring realistically textured and lit comedy cockroaches running around causing mayhem.

'Morty' production art


'Rocky' production art


Body size production art


I also textured the 'roaches, which leads me to a funny (and kinda gruesome) story below --

Final Rocky render


For reference, we ordered a bunch of cockroaches from the NSW Uni to study the textures, the they way their 'skin' reacts to the light etc. So a take-away container arrives the next day, filled with about 50 dead cockroaches. I was handed the container and promptly opened the lid, thinking they were all dead.

Well, within seconds about 25 of the bloody 'roaches saw their chance and tried to escape. The little bastards had been playing dead the whole time and I'd been duped!

So after screaming like a girl and trying to get the lid back on, one really tenacious 'roach got itself stuck between the lid and the base of the container. I stood there frozen, wondering if he would make that final leap for freedom. But his wings were caught fast and I guess he wasn't game enough to go without them.

So I put the container down, and grabbed some pins that I had ready or waiting. Wings stuck, the little fella didn't realise that with his boldness, he had actually volunteered to be the cockroach that I would dissect and shoot with the Fuel Canon Eos camera.

I asked the little fella if he had any last words, but he just kinda hung there and kicked his feet every few seconds. Deciding it was cruel to leave him there over night, I quickly grabbed the pin and ran him through. He never even winced, the tough little sucker. Do cockroaches even have nerve endings? Can they register pain? Cause if they can, he did a good job hiding it.

So I took him downstairs near the kitchen for dissection, but realised it might put other Fuel employees off there lunch they saw me cutting up a cockroach on the bench. Plus they might assume the I was actually MAKING my lunch. Then that would be weird -- getting strange looks and being asked how my lunch was, cockroach leg hanging from the corner of my mouth.

So about an hour later, the little wanna-be escapee lay in pieces around me, while I took macro-photos of all its bits and pieces that make up a cockroach. Funny thing is, when I finished and uploaded the images to my mac and viewed them, a cockroach leg looks like its filled with a meat that looks kinda like pork! go figure...

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Production Frames