John Lewis Christmas 2019: Excitable Edgar

3D Scanning for Excitable Edgar

Edgar is a fire-breathing dragon who can’t quite control his own enthusiasm… which meant the CG team needed him to interact convincingly with real performers, practical sets and snow, not just sit in front of them looking impressive. We contributed 3D scanning to the production pipeline behind him.

We captured accurate geometric data of the built environments Edgar moves through, combining point cloud processing with high-resolution photogrammetry to deliver fully textured assets and giving the VFX artists the spatial accuracy to make him cast the right shadows, displace snow the way something his size actually would, and hold correct scale against the human cast. Small details, but they’re the ones that separate a creature the audience believes in from one they don’t.

’Excitable Edgar’ went on to become one of the most widely shared John Lewis Christmas ads on record… millions of views and a genuine wave of press coverage in the days after release, all riding on whether audiences bought into Edgar as a character rather than an effect.

When a single CG creature is carrying the emotional weight of an entire commercial, the accuracy of everything around him matters more than usual. Our scanning work was the part of the foundation nobody credits by name, but it’s exactly where that believability starts.