Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/977547
24 cgw | e d i t i o n 1 , 2 0 1 8 Tower of Success MPC recently worked closely with ad agency RPA and directors Smith & Foulkes from production company Nexus to create a unique, 60-second spot for Honda, "Tower of Success," that promotes the automaker's 10th-generation Accord. The studio was called on to create an entire city of CG trophies, along with the trophy characters springing to life. The spot opens with a plaque that reads, "Better Is a Never-Ending Quest," and continues to pan across a series of common bronze trophies, including a figure of a bowler sitting on top of a trophy. He then breaks free from his still pose. Aer he announces, "There's a danger to success," the camera continues to focus on other figures, moving from a soccer player to a fisherman, and an angel to archers and more, who all break free from their stiffened poses and preach about the dangers of being at the top. According to MPC Visual Effects Super- visor Ryan McDougal, who is based in the studio's LA location and who headed up its CG efforts on the spot, the directors were really focused on the flow of the dia- logue and the performance. "The camera just kept moving up, and as it was steadily rising, the message is conveyed that you can always get better," he explains. "Ulti- mately, we land on this beautiful shot of the Honda Accord, which is really the apex of the whole spot." Directors Smith & Foulkes called on MPC because, as McDougal puts it, "They trust the fact that we can make things look photoreal and tactile, and build a whole world. That's really what they were aer. They've done more stylized pieces in the past, and they knew we could bring that kind of life to this project." According to McDougal, the directors are attuned to good performance in animation and quality camera work. Since "Tower of Success" featured fully CG char- acters, everything in the spot was previs'd. The directors started out with story- boards and some 3D previs before MPC took over, spending about four months to complete the project. "We collaborated with them over an intense period – for about two to three weeks – to sharpen the camera moves and figure out the performances and then block everything," he explains. One of the things the directors want- ed to convey was that the characters were made of metal, so MPC needed to communicate that each character was "struggling to break free of their own selves," says McDougal. He explains that they would move in a "kind of staccato fashion, which is close to stop-motion. Again, the message is that they are trying to be better than they are. Normally, they are these stagnant things that sit in these beautiful poses, and they are actually trying to do more. So, we animated all characters in a naturalistic way to get the timing and the performance down so it would look just like a normal, photoreal character moving around. Then we went in and started taking frames out – maybe it was only on the arm or the whole body – to create more of a stepped look, as if it's struggling to move." To complete the characters, MPC relied primarily on Autodesk's Maya for rendering and production, Side Effects' Houdini for the city population, and Foundry's Nuke for com- positing. The team rendered in Autodesk's Arnold, textured using Allegorithmic's Substance Painter, and then created their own tool – a city population tool – that they