The Monarch Of The Glen

National Galleries Of Scotland

We were commissioned by the National Gallery of Scotland to design and animate a stag, which would be reminiscent of the famous stag portrait, Monarch of the Glen, as part of a campaign to raise funds to buy the painting from Diageo. We received this commission on the back of our own prize-winning film, Wildless, in which we use various 3D wildlife models, including a stag. We re-purposed the same stag which we rigged, fattened up and remodelled to resemble its portly stature and proud pose. We then animated it into a loop to show it chewing grass and taking stock of its surroundings.

As this was projected onto the side of the National Gallery over the course of 2 days in February, we were encouraged to experiment with colour as the wall was a pale sandstone, anything too light would not stand out. We decided the best colours to use, in this case, would be white, orange, green and pink. Unsurprisingly, this caught the attention of the Scottish media, featuring on BBC News and Newsnight, STV News at 6 and various newspapers.