Pepto Bismol "Turducken" || Deconstruct || Design + Modeling

turducken  (ˈtɜːdʌkən)

— n
	a boned turkey stuffed with a boned duck that is stuffed with a small boned chicken, sometimes also containing a breadcrumb or sausagemeat stuffing

Traditionally served as part of a Christmas or Thanksgiving holiday feast, the challenge facing S&M in completing this humorous spot for Pepto Bismol was to imagine what this tasty treat might look like as an actual beast and how it would behave in the wild.  A fun and exciting assignment, the Smoke & Mirrors Design team set to work visualizing this bizarre animal and its various attributes. Would it have a turkey's head or a duck's head?  Would it walk like a turkey or waddle like a duck?  Would the feather configuration more closely follow the lighter hues of a chicken, the earth tones of a turkey, or the more vibrant colors of a duck?

The Smoke & Mirrors Design team addressed these questions and many more while conceptualizing their version of the mighty turducken.  Creating several combinations of turkey/duck/chicken, they presented the agency, Publicis Worldwide, with several options from which to choose:

Turducken Design || Iteration

This first version boasted a duck's face, neck and feet,  a turkey's bum and a chicken's body, wings and facial embelishments.

Turducken Design || Iteration 2

This second iteration pushed that idea a bit further playing with different ideas for the head wings and tail and explored the possibility of a more chicken-like face and the incorporation of duck wings and a hybrid duck/turkey leg.

Turducken Design || Iteration 3

Yet another iteration experimented with the chicken's and turkey's bum feathers and face, the duck's body and beak and the chicken's and turkey's feet and facial features.

Final Turducken Design

After several design iterations, the team landed on the final design:  The green-hued head, beak and webbed feet of a mallard duck, the facial embellishments (comb and wattle) of a chicken, a body incorporating a gradation of the feathering of all three animals, turkey wings and the voluminous fanned feather configuration of a turkey's bum.

Having settled on the look of the beast, the step for the S&M CG was to create the 3D version of the creature.  Modeled using Mudbox, attention to creating the small details of the animal were extremely important in lending a sense of realism to the character.  Mudbox allowed the team to intricately sculpt the animal to make it into a believable integration of turkey, duck and chicken attributes.

Detailed model shot of the duck beak and head, turkey's wattle and chicken's comb

Texturing the model came next.  A bit of an unusual challenge, the team had to seamlessly blend the coloring of a turkey, duck and chicken.  This texture would later help determine what type of feathers would be placed where on the animal's body.  Using a program called Mari by The Foundry, the S&M CG team textured the turducken by painting directly onto the body of the model.  

Turducken texture map

With a fully modeled and textured turducken in place, the team set to work rigging and animating the creature.  Check back on Friday 16 December for more on this and stay tuned to this space the rest of this week to learn more about the rest of the work that went into achieving this spot!