MPC’s Head Turner : Drench

Ulf Johansson has directed Drench ‘Cubehead’ The spot features a puzzled man trying to solve his own Rubik’s style puzzle head. The commercial was produced by Kate Bailey at CHI&Partners and Philippa Smith at Smith & Jones. MPC created the puzzle head combining live action elements.

In this week’s fxpodcast we speak to MPC vfx supervisor Matthew Unwin about Drench ‘Cubehead’. Click READ MORE below for more about the project as well as exclusive quicktimes behind the scenes stages of the flame work showing how the effect was achieved.

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With the classic song ‘Oops Upside Your Head’ by the Gap Band, a man walks down a tube station with a baffled head. By keeping his brain topped up with Juicy drench he manages to solve the puzzle. MPC was involved from an early stage, working closely with production to find the best approach to develop a Rubik’s style head. Two masks were built, one used for the wide shots, when the actor is walking down the platform and a second one used as a model for the moving cubehead.

This was built as an exact replica of the actor’s head, paying special attention to skin textures and colours. The moves for the cubehead were carefully choreographed and the actor was then shot in the matching positions to capture his facial expressions – including his head hanging upside down drinking Drench! MPC’s 2D team led by Matthew Unwin was responsible for integrating all the elements to create a realistic head. The puzzle head model was shot in the different combinations and MPC tracked and composited the eyes, mouth, chin and other moving parts using Flame, Nuke and Shake. Skin details were added for more realism and reflections were composited to the walls.

The finished spot:
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/drench_cubehead.mov” text=”Click here to watch” width=”640″ height=”360″]

The stages of adding the blink:
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/blink_stage1.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 1″ width=”640″ height=”360″]
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/blink_stage2.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 2″ width=”640″ height=”360″]
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/blink_stage3.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 3″ width=”640″ height=”360″]
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/blink_stage4.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 4″ width=”640″ height=”360″]

The stages of comping the mouth:
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/drink_stage1.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 1″ width=”640″ height=”360″]
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/drink_stage2.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 2″ width=”640″ height=”360″]
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/drink_stage3.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 3″ width=”640″ height=”360″]
[qtlink url=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/drink_stage4.mov” text=”Click here to watch stage 4″ width=”640″ height=”360″]

3 thoughts on “MPC’s Head Turner : Drench”

  1. Ah, so Artem was used for creating the physical mask then (the clue being the Gremlin in the background!). Very cool work by both MPC and Artem 🙂 Good to see both physical and digital coming together beautifully.

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