DG Happy Holiday Campaign – 2022

In marrying two distinct and different techniques in stop motion and 3D mapping, Happy Finish was able to produce a visually stunning film that showcases the pure luxury of Dolce&Gabbana, its products and its heritage. In an ongoing partnership 2022 marks the second year that D&G have trusted us to deliver their Christmas campaign.

For this execution the challenge was that characters of Domenico and Stefano had to jump, dance and above all, sing. Bringing this vision to life meant modelling a face for each phoneme, printing everything in 3D, decorating it all by hand, conceiving a mechanism to replace the expressions, frame by frame, implementing the mannequin with a solid but flexible custom rig, and revising the clothes so that they too allowed adequate mobility.

The previous campaign had time constraints meaning Happy Finish were only able to shoot the puppets interacting with the products in front of a green screen. This year the Happy Finish team was able to showcase its full capabilities by using a mixed production process, pairing traditional stop motion techniques with innovative virtual production approaches such as using 3D, traditional mapping and CGI technology.