It's a smoky bar, Anytown, U.S.A. A voice calls out,
"BAR-tender!" We see the speaker - and it takes a moment
to realize that it is a chimp. Sure, chimpanzees can't
talk; but this one, sitting at the bar and philosophizing
about the evolution of beer as he himself evolves into a
modern man, really appears to be doing just that. His
teeth and tongue are clearly visible, and his mouth is
going through all the motions in perfect sync with the
voice. This visual pun is presented by Michelob Golden Draft
in the commercial spot entitled 'Evolution' - and the
visual effects are intoxicating. To accomplish the simian
lip-sync, Rhythm & Hues utilized a new application of
computer animation that is, itself, a kind of evolution.
Whereas, formerly, effects such as these were achieved by
painting two-dimensionally on top of live-action plate
photography, Michelob's talking primate was realized by
overlaying an animated, three-dimensional computer
generated face on top of a live-action chimp. The first step was to set up a digital database of the
chimp's head, Rick Lazzarini's Character Shop was
commissioned to sculpt models of the chimp that could
then be scanned into the computer. "Since three chimps
were to be on the live-action set," said effects producer
Doug Nichols, "Lazzarini had sculptors Jim Kagel, John
Spence and Glenn Hans make life-size heads of all three.
That way we could make our computer generated image
immediately following the shoot, no matter which chimp
was ultimately used ." Lazzarini and crew measured the
live-action chimps precisely. "We used sculptor's
calipers," Lazzarini stated, "to get the dimensions of
their skulls, measure the distance between the centers of
their eyes, the corners of their eyes and so forth." Once
the heads were completed, dental stone castings of all
three were made and mounted on wooden bases. A three-year old chimp named Sally was the eventual
selectee. Her head sculpture was marked with lines-much
like a topographical map - and her facial features were
traced with a digitizing pen so that a full range of
expression could be created. This base of information was
used to track the live-action head with the computer
generated overlay, and later to animate the mouth and
muzzle. Randy Roberts of Rhythm & Hues directed the
live-action shoot. As with any film work involving
animals, it had its inherent problems, including the
limited attention span of the chimp. Animating the muzzle of the computer model to deliver
the scripted lines was the next step. "This was done
using an animation program called 'Maggots' which created
the mouth shapes," said Lurye, "and a Macintosh Mac
Classic interfaced with Silicon Graphics Iris
workstations. The Mac Classic enabled us to play the
sound frame-by-frame so that we could hear the precise
moment when words or syllables would begin and end, or
when vowel sounds would shift from an 'eee' sound to an
'ay' sound, for instance." For inspiration, the animators
studied Walt Disney's The Jungle Book. "The scene where
the apes sing 'I Want to Be like You' was particularly
helpful," said technical director Kevin Barnhill,
"because we could study how the lips had been animated to
make specific sounds or words." Larry Weinberg sees more applications for the
technology in the future. "Once you get people trained on
the computer, there's so much more you can do digitally
in painting an image, grabbing real texture and spreading
it around as you want, being able to combine backgrounds
of one scale with foreground action of another. The only
thing that's holding us back is that there are not enough
talented people trained to do it yet." That will be the
next evolutionary step.
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1995-98
COMMERCIAL SPOT:
SIMIAN SIMULATION
article by Janice Hubbard
Rick Lazzarini of the Character
Shop prepares to mold
a chimp head for the Michelob "Evolution"
commercial.
Rick's note: Not mentioned is the 3-stage
prosthetic appliance we made for in-between morph stages;
you can see this on our Prosthetics
page.
Article excerpt from CINEFEX
#52, © CINEFEX, 1992. Reproduced for review
purposes
Photograph by The Character
Shop
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