MPC's Cheetah Super Bowl Spot for Hyundai

It wasn't long ago that it was the Super Bowl. I only actually knew about it after when my American friends on Facebook were raving about it and when some amazing advert spots that were shown during it were appearing everywhere! For those wondering... in Britain the Super Bowl isn't at all big, hardly anyone watches. Could be because its on during the night here or because Football (yes Football not Soccer) is the game most loved here.

Any way, Cheetah is a collaborative effort between MPC, Innocean and Rattling Stick Director Daniel Kleinman and I must say, WOW! I know cats really well and this has to be one of the best example of a Cheetah I have ever seen. The run and leap are all accurately done and you can tell the animators researched the animal well.

MPC created the photoreal cheetah by photographing a real specimen on set and capturing high-dynamic-range pictures of the lighting conditions, then combining both of those elements in Furtility, the studio's in-house fur-and-hair tool. To test the efficacy of their project, the studio produced an image with three cheetahs and asked in-house artists and producers to identify the real one. On all but one case, they missed.

I wish I could see that image and see if I could tell, I have a sharp eye for detail and as my friends always point out; a canny ability to see something that doesn't belong. (For example, I'm quite often called out by my boyfriend to find a tiny nut or something that he's dropped on the gravel).

"Creature work is difficult at best, but creating an animal that really exists and is in the preceding shot is particularly demanding," noted MPC LA Managing Director Andrew Bell. "Our in-house experts had to do just that in Cheetah. Between Furtility and fur gurus such as Dominic Edwards, producing this spot was not only possible, but pleasurable."
I so want to do Creature Animation. This whole comment just adds to my reason why. It's a challenge. You have to create something that is believable and in this case already exists which I think just adds to the pleasure! You have to research the animal, study it and find its quirks and small movements that make it alive and then reproduce that but doing what you want it to do.