Concept Art

Okto the Octopus — Dancing With Himself for BMW

I got to do concept art and character design on this one for the brilliant team at Untold Studios, and it is absolutely one of my favourites.

The brief from agency Jung von Matt Hamburg was elegantly mad: design a fully CG octopus that dances a waltz, as a metaphor for BMW's new Heart of Joy central control unit. The idea being that an octopus naturally controls each of its eight arms independently, much like a conventional car with separate systems for braking, steering, and acceleration. Give it one central nervous system and suddenly everything moves in perfect, fluid harmony. Poetic, right?

The trickiest part of my work on Okto's character design was figuring out how to make him feel like he's dancing with someone, when he's completely alone. A waltz is an inherently partnered form. Two bodies, mirrored weight, call and response. Eight arms gave us a lot to play with, but getting the design to read as coordinated grace rather than writhing chaos was genuinely hard. The key was finding how pairs of arms could echo each other — leading and following within the same body, so Okto becomes both dancer and partner simultaneously.

The VFX build was next level. Rigging Lead Lewis Pickston developed bespoke systems for Okto's arms to hit that sweet spot between cephalopod realism and expressive performance, and Animation Supervisor Suvi Jokiniemi, alongside Character Supervisor Alex Doyle, brought the whole thing to life beautifully. The moonwalk was apparently added halfway through. Of course it was. And it's perfect.

The film was directed by Diarmid Harrison-Murray, with VFX Creative Direction by Tom Raynor and the full crew at Untold. Shot on location in South Africa with underwater live-action plates, the whole thing is cut by Quin Williams at TenThree, coloured by George K at Black Kite, and scored by Max Perryment with sound by Hello Robin. Everyone on this fired.

The results speak for themselves, BMW "Heart of Joy" took home two awards at the 2026 VES Awards (the industry's top VFX accolade): Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial and Outstanding Compositing and Lighting in a Commercial. Untold also held three of the five nominations in each category, which is frankly absurd in the best way.

Really proud to have been part of this one. Go watch the Octowaltz. ✦