DDB London and Independent bring us an intriguing campaign for the new VW BlueMotion Polo.

One solitary plastic bag floats through the air down a street. We realise this is no ordinary plastic bag however, as it stops at a set of traffic lights. Two more coloured bags tumble down the ramp of a car park. A few more blow along a darkened street at night. As the music builds, we witness an ever-increasing number of bags floating down a country lane, through suburbia, hovering at a level crossing, even travelling down a motorway. The huge ‘flock’ eventually comes to rest in a driveway, where the camera pans down to reveal the new BlueMotion Polo, the bags having mimicked its journey.

The viewer might be forgiven for thinking that real plastic bags were somehow trained to head in the correct direction(!) but this is where Glassworks came in. The challenge was to replicate bags in CG and integrate them into the surroundings. First a single bag was created upon which dynamic forces were used to simulate the movement of a real bag. Once this had been achieved,  multiple bags were created to move in a pack, reacting with each other and their environment. The texture, shading and lighting of the bags was particularly complex.