This spot involved a combination of both 3D animation as well as 2D warping, using Elastic Reality. The challenge was to animate a shark talking using previously shot stock footage. This was accomplished by using the same method as that in the movie “Babe”, in which the shark face was modeled with multiple mouth positions and then animated to the narration track. It was then tracked to the live footage using manual tracking.

Originally, 3D tracking software was going to be used but it soon became apparent that it would not work since all the video was stock footage. This meant that it had no on-set measurements of any kind, which was a requirement at the time, to do any 3D tracking. Once animated, the face was then lit and rendered with an opacity falloff so that it would blend seamlessly onto the existing shark. This spot features a funny scene in which the shark is salivating with it’s tongue hanging out, “Homer Simpson” style.

This was modeled and animated with Softimage, rendered with Mental Ray, and composited with Flint. Warping was done using Elastic Reality.