MPC post Seriously Strong cheese commercials

MPC have posted two commercials for Seriously Strong cheddar cheese.
The 1 x 40 second 'Heist' and 1 x 20 second 'Yacht' were directed by Wayne Holloway at Stark Films for agency 1576.
Heist features a covert operation to intercept and steal Seriously Strong cheddar deliveries around the country. At the end of the spot the mastermind behind the plot is revealed – a suave character, with the body of a man and a mouse head! Yacht depicts a Bond-like scenario on board a liner, with a “man” reading a newspaper about the heist, with a beautiful lady at his side. As he drops the paper we see it is the mastermind himself – the sophisticated mouse man.
MPC created the mouse head in CG, modeled entirely in Maya. Lead animator, Lars Magnus Holmgren designed the look of the gangster mouse, bearing in mind the brief that he should be suave, sophisticated, more human than mouse with a rough, “George Clooney” like attraction! Lars set up parallel blend shapes, which allowed him to morph between different model options, selecting the perfect eyes, cheekbones etc. The shapes of the eyes were important and needed to reflect the intelligence of the character. Once Lars had set up shaders in Maya, 3D Animator Richard Nelson fine tuned these in Renderman and lit the shots to match the live action.
MPC’s Visual Effects Programmer Andrew Harvey looked at solutions to the brief of creating the photo-real fur. To allow maximum flexibility and greater creative freedom, Andrew developed proprietary software. Building upon a system he had been working on for feathers, Andrew spent two months developing a programme. The software allowed on-screen interactive real-time previews of the fur and provided “groomable” fur, so that absolute control of the shapes of individual hairs was possible. Hair could also be clumped together to look thicker where necessary. MPC’s new fur programme is currently being adapted for use in a forthcoming feature film.
The compositing for both commercials was by Inferno artist Nick Seresin. MPC colourist Mark Horrobin graded the spots.
(GB)