CenturyLink took over Qwest recently, and they started a new ad campaign to move into the western market. It’s an internet offer called the “Solid Deal” for $19.95. The campaign has a series of commercials with a host set in a test range. The idea is that anything you throw at the $19.95 deal will not damage or diminish it. Previous spots included a wrecking ball, bomb squad, ninjas, and a jet fighter. The spot I worked on, has a robot attacking the deal. Frustrated after trying to saw the numbers and failing to make a mark, he rolls away shaking his head.
Check out the spot with details below:
What I Did:
The robot was modeled and rigged when I arrived on scene. It was my job to animate, light, render, and composite the robot using Maya and Nuke. This meant setting up all the passes and optimizing Mental Ray to spit out frames fast. There was no render farm, so everything had to be done locally. My passes included a beauty, ambient occlusion, motion vector, shadow, reflection on numbers, and an rgb matte pass.
The first thing I did was to integrate the main character into the matte painting using Nuke. The painting had changed from the previous spots and I needed to adjust the shadows, dust and keys.
Next, the robot enters leaving behind tracks in the dirt. I animated, lit, rendered the layers/passes, and composited the robot. I used motion vectors in Nuke to dial in the motion blur. A refelction pass on numbers helped alot with integration. I also created an RGB matte pass to color correct specific areas of the robot. The tread element was achieved by building a 2d tread pattern along the path of the robots entrance. I then placed the sequence on a card in 3d space and multiplied it over the ground plane.
I originally blocked out the entire animation, including the hits against the numbers. Another artist and compositor took over these two shots once the agency/client had approved the timing of all the animation. They ended up splitting two shots into four. So this helped with the tight deadline
The exit of the robot required another tread pattern that included the rotation at the numbers. I had built this into the entire image from beginning, so using a garbage mask I revealed 
the rest of the treads as the robot moves across screen. Notice the dust hit on his way out. This was done in 2d using several dust hit elements, time warping them and creating shadows by hand. I warped and animated the hit as time goes by for a more dynamic feel.
Examples of Passes:
These are some of the passes I used:
Ambient Occlusion
Motion Vector
RGB Matte
Shadow
Shots:
Here are the sequences by themselves:
ShotA
ShotB