This spot shows how choosing a toy for your child can be a hell of a lot harder than paying for it.

With the help of a cuddly orangutan toy, a dad is guided through the throng of a major toy shop and introduced to a host of toys who all try to sell themselves to him.

This overwhelming experience is contrasted by the ease of paying for the chosen toy, with Barclaycard's Contactless Payment technology.

The Barclaycard Toys commercial involved firstly a detailed previs in CG. This informed the shoot

and what was required in terms of camera angles and number of plates. It also helped outline initial

timings of shots for editorial.

On set, hero plates of the lead actor and monkey were shot against green screen. These plates

were then scaled appropriately and composited them into background plates made up of the toys.

The toy backgrounds were either shot as pupeteered collectives, or individually. In flame, multiple

layers of toys were put together to create the sea of toys that the actors travelled through. With the

sheer number of toys, for some shots there were up to 50 layers. Some of the toys such as action

man and the transformer car were shot stop frame and were composited into the hero scenes.

Additionally toys were augmented to accentuate their in camera animation, such as moving parts

and also changed eyelines. Toys had to have additional rig removal in some instances before they

were put into the scenes. Flashing lights were added to the toys, plus compositing an electric face to

one particular character.

The monkey was shot with a non speaking head. Post the main shoot, we extracted from the locked

edit all takes that had to be covered with the new monkey speaking head. Tests were created that

informed shooting angle and lens for the new element. The new monkey head was then tracked

and composited to the body, ensuring angles and perspectives matched and joins were blended

seamlessly. Additional frame cutting was used to help lip synch.

The helicopter was made fully in CG and composited with the lead actor and monkey, who were

rigged to lift off the ground. Where there was interaction with props such as the whoopee cushion

and car, the talent were shot with rigs and the correct toy was composited into the scene.

The most challenging scene was the 180 degree camera move that reveals the world of toys. The

actors were shot on green screen with the camera on a circular rig. The background was created and

tracked to that move. The difficulties laid in ensuring the perspectives matched and also that the

reveal from a creative view defined the scale of the world.

'Depthing' was added as a final creative aesthetic. Focus was thrown off in various areas to help

draw the viewer's eye to a particular toy. It also helped the feeling of being amongst the toys. This

was evaluated on a shot by shot basis with each area requiring roto and then defocusing.

Work was created against 3K log plates. This gave ultimate control of camera moves, compositing

and framing and colour workflow. Flame, Nuke and Maya were the tools that were used. The final

piece was graded in Baselight.