Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/884568
s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 c g w 2 5 Special MPC artists create a photoreal stork at the center of a live-action commercial n an attempt to answer the "uncomfortable" question that young children oen ask their par- ents – Where do babies come from? – adults oen abandon the truthful explanation for the age-old pro-creation myth that is more on a level with a young- ster's comprehension: Storks deliver them. In Leo Burnett's live-action commercial for Fiat titled "The Stork," one of these large birds lands on a family's doorstep with a small bundle of joy, but upon seeing a Fiat parked in a driveway across the street, the stork instead delivers the precious cargo to the Fiat home. "It was clear from the beginning that the star of the whole commercial, from a storytelling point of view, was the stork. This ad only works if people believe what they were seeing," says Martino Madeddu, 3D visual effects supervisor at MPC, the creative studio behind the stork character. "That is what Xavier pushed for at every stage of the production." Madeddu is referring to Xavier Mairesse at Mercurio Cinematografica, who directed the commercial. Also work- ing with Madeddu was a team of specialist artists in the MPC Life group, which spent over two months craing the photoreal bird, the star of the show. According to David Bryan, lead animator, the MPC team worked closely with Mairesse from very early stages of the production. "He acted out shot-by-shot how he wanted the stork to behave and the emotions it would convey," Bryan says. The group researched extensively the actions of storks landing on the ground in a heavy, clumsy way, looking for different running styles and speeds as well as how the wings behaved. "Finding small imperfections in its movement was important too, so we could create that contrasting, graceful and delicate moment as the baby is BY KAREN MOLTENBREY I Delivery MPC PUTS THE CG STORK THROUGH ITS PACES BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE FINAL IMAGE (BOTTOM).