Mountain Dew

Project overview

For Mountain Dew Baja Blast's Super Bowl LVIII campaign, Aubrey Plaza insists she is "having a blast" through a series of increasingly chaotic situations, before reuniting with Nick Offerman for the suitably restrained finale: riding a dragon through a vast tropical landscape. The film was directed by Jim Jenkins through O Positive, created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, with VFX by House of Parliament.

My contribution focused on concept art for the dragon skin texture and digital matte painting for the backgrounds, developing the islands, coastlines, mountains, skies and atmosphere that give the dragon sequence its scale. The landscapes needed to feel spectacular and cinematic, but also believable enough that the comedy stayed with the performers rather than the scenery.

The process involved the usual relaxing tropical-island routine: building every mountain, moving coastlines around, adjusting several thousand trees and discussing exactly how much haze a dragon can fly through before it stops looking heroic. It was less of a holiday than the final images suggest, but there was certainly a lot of blasting.

Having a Blast won the 2024 OMMA Award in the Beverage (Non-Alcoholic) category. The campaign also placed second in The New York Times' Super Bowl "Best Of" coverage, while #HavingABlast trended ahead of Taylor Swift through three quarters of the game.