Dolmio When’s Your Dolmio Day?
Client: T&P
Brand: Dolmio
Type: Branded Content,
Service: Design, Direction, Character Development, VFX, Animation
Using cutting-edge technology to breathe new life into Dolmio’s much-loved family. From physical puppets to fully digital characters ready for a new era, all whilst preserving their trademark charm.
THE CREATIVE CHALLENGE
A decade away from the spotlight
The Dolmio family made its screen debut in the early 2000s and soon became a fixture of British television. Puppeteered characters, big personalities and a distinctive take on Italian family life made them instantly recognisable. But after nearly a decade away from screens, bringing them back for a new generation demanded a fresh approach. Mayda was tasked with modernising the characters while preserving the warmth, humour and tactility that made them so loved.
CONSIDERATIONS
Beyond the puppet strings
With traditional puppetry no longer viable, Mayda explored several approaches to translating the family into a new creative system. Careful consideration was given to balancing reinvention with the flexibility to extend the characters and assets beyond a single campaign.
“We needed a flexible pipeline that could manage characters, motion capture and digital props, while delivering fast, social-first content and premium output for TV.”
Ben Smith, ECD & Director, Mayda
THE APPROACH
From puppets to pixels
The chosen direction was a seamless blend of motion capture, Unreal Engine and VFX to recreate the family and their world digitally, offering greater creative control while retaining the natural performances and expressive qualities of the original characters.
THE PROCESS
Capturing the character
With Motion Capture, actors were able to embody each member of the family, translating their individual personalities, mannerisms and relationships to the screen. The result was a natural, expressive family dynamic that stayed true to the characters audiences knew and loved.
Rebuilding a familiar world
Adapting the family and their surroundings into a digital format required close attention to detail. Mayda redesigned each character, carefully refining their facial nuances, poses and gestures to ensure they still felt like themselves, just a little more current. For the family home, Mayda used AI-assisted workflows to explore environments based on a detailed brief blending old English influences with ties to Italy, allowing the team to experiment and evolve the world as the creative evolved.
THE OUTCOME
Built for flexiblity
The decision to use Unreal Engine was driven by its production flexibility. Capable of both high-quality real-time and feature-film-quality offline rendering, UE offered an adaptable platform for a wide range of outputs. From social-first content and premium TV to OOH billboards featuring Mayda’s character assets, this approach allowed the work to be adapted and reused across formats, giving Dolmio’s much-loved family room to evolve beyond the TVC.
THE RESULT
A new chapter for the Dolmio family
The return of the Dolmio family generated a strong positive response from both the industry and audiences, who embraced the nostalgia. The campaign was named ‘Ad of the Day’ by The Drum, while System1 placed the ad in the top 4% of ads in its category, with a 4.9-star rating. Mayda’s approach gave the iconic family a new lease of life, while creating a foundation for future stories.
