AIRTRICITY HAVE A new advert, which features an orangutan wandering around a city.

It walks the streets, has a stroll through a restaurant and generally has a bit of a stare at things.

Some people love the ad.

But a lot of people are weirdly confused about the ape.

There are at least a couple saying that an orangutan shouldn’t have been used in the advert.

But in fact, no orangutans were used in filming – the entire thing is CGI.

This ‘making of’ video shows how they constructed the orangutan using a human actor and a lot of computer wizardry.

After studying lots of nature documentaries, they fixed up an actor with some motion-capture devices and had him mimic an orangutan’s movements.

Then, they added layers of muscle, skin and hair to the basic frame to create the orangutan.

Her name is ‘Maya’, apparently. It took ten months to make her.

So these people worrying about a giant ape invasion probably don’t need to worry.

There’s a series of billboards which feature the orangutan’s face superimposed on Irish landscapes. If you haven’t seen the TV version, they make no sense whatsoever.

This has been quite distressing to some.

So what does the company have to say? Why the giant ape?

According to Airtricity, the orangutan is there basically as an example of how someone who’d never encountered electrical energy before might be amazed by it. The company’s media page says:

Our new ad encourages people to rediscover the wonder of energy through fresh eyes and reminds us how easily we can take it for granted.

We’re pretty sure this means no giant ape invasion. For now, anyway.