SyFlex in a commercial for Telma cereal
Images and clips courtesy of Gravity, Tel Aviv
What
TV commercial
Who
Client: Telma
Advertising Agency: Bouman Bar Rivnai
Production Company: Gravity
Aired: February 2005
Where
SyFlex was used by Gravity to create the pealing skins of the characters changing
their identities, in a commercial for a cereal.
More
Gravity, a post production house based in Tel Aviv, used
SyFlex in two shots for the successful commercial. In the spot,
the young characters change their skin and identity, pealing off the previous look.
We spoke with the guys over at Gravity about the work on the commercial:
Syflex: What was the initial brief?
Gravity: There were a series of shots with the girl coming out from her previous
look, both outfit and actual skin, with the old look falling to the ground like cloth.
In the finishing punch-line shot the guy is "opening-up" to reveal a younger boy inside,
who is coming out on a skateboard.
Syflex: Why did you choose to work with SyFlex?
Gravity: We immediately knew we are going to use SyFlex for this! We worked with
SyFlex before and we know that tests with SyFlex are fast, and the results are good.
Syflex: Tell us more about the work process...
Gravity: In the shot with the young women, we built a model matching the actual figure, as one poly mesh,
with a pre-made cut. In the animation an inner object, which was a simple sphere comes out of the body,
colliding and pushing it through the cut. The SyFlex Nails were very useful to get some smaller movements
of the body/cloth.
The challenge was to get the right effect for the falling down and how the cloth collides
with the floor. It was a matter of defining the SyFlex parameters right. We reached the right effect relatively fast,
thanks to the speed of syFlex. We could ran as many tests as we needed in a short time, and find the right style for
the falling.
The shot of the man was more demanding, because it is really short, and many things are happening that needed to be timed very precisely.
We had to control the simulation and
tell it where to go in each frame. For that, we created three different simulations:
one for the guy that is pulled back and the shirt pushes forward, one for the shirt
opening up with a sphere coming from inside, and another simulation where we moved the
shirt with SyFlex nails. To combine the three simulations together we used Maya's blend
shape, with a script we wrote. This script generates a blend shape from the original
simulations, which allows me to control the animation speed, and to integrate the
SyFlex simulation with other animations.
Syflex: How long did it take you to do this spot? How was it recieved?
Gravity: The whole project took two months. The SyFlex work took one to two days
per shot. We also did some work with it that ended up not being used (see the second
test clip). The director was very happy with the results, and the spot received
great responses in Israel.
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