Director Conor Finnegan taps his stop-motion roots to bring texture and personality to new feathered friends Chuck and Gina featured in the insurance company’s first 3D animated campaign.
Nexus Studios helped two new charming, feathered friends, Chuck and Gina, take flight for Progressive Insurance’s first foray into the world of 3D animation. Directed by Conor Finnegan and brought to life by Nexus Studios and Arnold Worldwide, the humorous campaign follows these pigeon pals on a delightful journey of savings exploration. And they’ve got H. Jon Benjamin! As a pigeon!
Drawing from his stop-motion and puppetry background, Conor injected a sense of tactility into the characters, also embracing improvisation during voice-over, a technique more common in puppetry but rare in CG animation. This innovative approach allowed for natural and nuanced performances.
The campaign’s characters, Chuck and Gina, embody distinct personalities. Chuck is described as the optimistic dreamer, possessing a subtly humanized silhouette, evident in his relaxed wing placement, upright posture, and intuitive prop handling. In contrast, the witty and streetwise Gina proudly embraces her avian nature, characteristics reflected in her design, her more controlled movements, and occasional birdlike twitches.
Nexus Studios’ CG supervisor Dave Hunt and CG lead Nico Domerego shared some insights into the production process, which started with many 2D sketches and design iterations of the characters Chuck and Gina to get the “...balance of stylization and realism right.”
“Once these characters felt right in terms of proportions, we then experimented with how they might look with a full body of feathers,” they explained. “Creating realistic feathers with stylized base proportions was a big challenge and required a lot of development before we hit the tone of the original 2D drawings.”
“When a character exists in 3D, there is the temptation to over-animate and throw too many movements into a scene,” they continued. “Conor’s more physical/practical approach meant he was really comfortable keeping the performances simple - a lot of the humor is in the script, so the animation should complement the vocals rather than distract from it.”
They added, “We also avoided moving the characters in a way that wouldn’t be feasible with a puppet. So, there is no squashing or stretching of limbs and features; it’s all within the realms of a practical setup. I think this helped to ground the characters in our world and fits the observational naturalistic humor well.”
Hunt and Domerego explained that feathers are “still one of the trickiest aspects of CG in terms of integration and workload.”
“Whilst stylization is possible, for the feathers to look correct, they need a reasonably realistic level of detail to them,” they explained. “This meant that Chuck and Gina needed thousands of feathers, and each one of those feathers consisted of the main rachi (the quill) and hundreds of barbs and barbules - those tiny sections that make up the full silhouette of the feather. Adding this amount of feather detail to the animated characters requires a lot of technical support and bespoke pipeline tools, but the results are definitely worth it.”
Finnegan added, “Creatively, it’s been a real highlight for me, from capturing the right comedic tone to creating and developing Chuck and Gina as characters. I'm excited for this campaign to sit amongst Progressive's flock of impressive films.”
Meet Chuck and Gina in the 3D animated spots:
“Dream: Bird’s-eye View” Progressive Insurance Commercial
“Mix It Up: Bird’s-eye View” Progressive Insurance Commercial
“Smartwatch: Bird’s-eye View” Progressive Insurance Commercial
Source: Nexus Studios
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
