A cat tale. (broadcast).(Glassworks creates 3D commercial for cat food)

A team of digital artists from Glassworks, a London animation and effects house, was extremely finicky about creating the first in a series of 3D television commercials for Kitekat cat food, which is airing now in the UK.

The 30-second spot, created by Glassworks with London-based Passion Pictures, features Cattus Kitekattus, a computer-generated cat who plays cat's cradle on a garden wall as a man walks by with a fish, followed by a butcher carrying meat. Surprisingly, the cat turns its nose up at the tasty morsels. But when its owner arrives with Kitekat, the cat lassoes a package of the food with the string, and begins to chow down.

Glassworks artists created the cat model in Alias|Wavefront's Maya, using a clay model produced by Passion Picture as a guideline. "We followed the design but also had to take into account how we were going to animate it," says artist Sean Elliott. "I used a polygonal model, rather than a NURBS model, so we wouldn't have joins and seams. This helped when it came time to apply the fur and textures."

Elliott notes that the artists visited a veterinary college for a lesson on cat ...