Lego 'Holiday'
I felt truly honoured to have the opportunity to be trusted to work with Disney's most beloved character, Olaf, in what is surely a great adventure with Lego, snow and a bunch of amazing kids.
Jul 16, 2023
3 min read
Director: Ellen Kuras
Prod. Company: The Corner Shop
Agency: Droga5 Dublin
Client: Lego
Of the six commercials, Holiday is the one closest to my heart.
The brief asked for fantastical animals built from LEGO® bricks — charming in itself — but the centrepiece was Olaf. Arguably Disney's most beloved character, and one that carries enormous expectation from audiences and from Disney's own team.
Disney supplied the geometry, which was generous and genuinely useful. What didn't come with it: textures, shaders, or a rig. So we built all of that from scratch, working to match Disney's own renders closely enough that the result would feel like it belonged in their world — as if the character had simply stepped out of Frozen and into ours.
We were lucky to have an animator on the team who knew Disney's movement language intimately. The internal bar was set very high. So when the feedback from Disney's head of animation came back minimal — almost silent — it landed somewhere between elation and quiet terror. Receiving near-approval from that level of craft is a little like a review with a deity. They were, to a person, generous and constructive, and I genuinely hope to meet them one day and say thank you properly.
The other unsung hero of this spot was snow. The film was shot in Prague in August — bone dry, not a flake in sight beyond what the production team laid practically on set. The Houdini simulation work that went into filling those streets convincingly was substantial, and it shows in the final frame in exactly the way good VFX should: invisibly.
The Holiday was the moment everything clicked — and the rest of the commercials followed with real momentum.
Thank you, everyone involved, for the trust, what an amazing one!