Changing heads for beer

article - http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4329

OK, let's see what we have got here. This is short commercial advertising Cascade beer. There is a lot to say about it. I think that this video is correct form the both technical and philosophical points of view. I like the idea of showing different peoples behavior represented by various animals. I remember the fairytale where all the characters are animals, and everyone has its unique behavior. Bear is clumsy, fox - sly, rabbit - coward and wolf is hungry and angry. I think that this method is very effective because it uses methapors which makes your brain work in order to find the meaning.
If we look at the story more deeply we can find some really important aspects. This reel doesn't hide dangerous nature of the alcoholic drinks (in this case it is a Cascade beer), it shows clearly : if you drink you become as an animal, you'll have no culture (intoxications take your councesness down) and four basic instincts would rule you - food, defense, sleep and sex.








Three of them are shown in this video. I am not sure if this was made by intension or by occasion, but it there anyway. Because of that we can understand what is the target audience of this advert. Also there is shown a destructive power of such drinking passion, we can see it from the title "Changing heads for beer". It is very interesting tendency, if we have a look on the Guinness advert we can see the same idea being told about drinking:








http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3169&page=1


Now let's have a look on the technical side of this work. Graphics has a really good quality it looks photorealistic enough Compositing which done with Syntheyes software works very well. On the project description said that actual actors had to wear some pieces of the fur on the heads as a reference for lighting 3D models. I think it is very wise way to solve the technical problem.

(click each image to see the videos)

Artists made a great effort in making animals emotions same readable as humans.
There are a lot of characters with heads of animals, but only 6 of them were made in 3D. All the crowd were wearing real mask, which I suppose later were digitally animated.

They have used next software:

Modeled with Maya and ZBrush
Camera and object tracking: Syntheyes
Animation: Maya
Rendering: Mental ray and RenderMan for Maya
Compositing: Shake and Flame