3D printing company DeeThree Limited created an assortment of 3D printed snails to act as stand-ins for Sheldon the Coronation Street loving snail. Sheldon was starring in the UK TV ad for satellite television company FreeSat and needed some real world doubles to help animate the CGI snail.
Snails aren’t the first animal that one applies the adjective ‘cute’ to, but Sheldon the snail is pretty dang cute. Yes, I know, real snails don’t make cute squeals or wear bow ties made of grass, but he’s still pretty adorable.
Sheldon was, of course, completely the result of talented CGI artists and is neither a real trained snail – oh how I wish – or an animatronic 3D printed mollusk. However when digital artists are mixing CGI and real footage it is necessary to have an object of some kind in place for the animators to reference the placement and orientation of the character being inserted into the frame.
Productions typically use things like sticks with ping pong balls on them to act as stand-ins for important objects. However now that 3D printing is so inexpensive and accessible many filmmakers have 3D printed replicas and props made to stand in for the CGI, which is why advertising company Framestore commissioned DeeThree to create some detailed Sheldon models. The clear snails were used to line up shots and then removed when filming started, while shadows and lighting were set using the solid model.
You can see Sheldon be late for Coronation Street in the TV ad here:
The Not-Sheldons were printed on several professional quality 3D printers from 3D Systems. DeeThree used both an iPro 8000 and a ProJet 3500 for various models, each with varying levels of detail. While the 3D printed snails don’t find themselves featured in the actual advert, they did play a vital role in allowing the entire commercial production to be completed in about two weeks. That’s pretty fast for a bunch of snails.
