Title: Instinct
Client: Axe North America

Production Company: Blacklist, New York
Executive Producer: Adina Sales
Producers: Alexander Unick, Karen Lawler

Director: againstallodds
Creative Director (againstallodds): Derek Picken
Executive Producer (againstallodds): Josh Thorne
Production Coordinator (againstallodds): Rima Kassar

3D/VFX: Milford, Stockholm
TD/ Supervisor: John Roxenhed
Producer: Johan Gustavsson
Art Director: Johan Moberg
Lighting TD: Robert Krupa

Music: Moodswing
Composers: Pedro Marques, Jean-Paul Wall
Singer: Saphir Cristal Stoffels Fernandes Tavares

Audio Finishing: Audio Engine
Audio Engineer: Carl Mandelbaum



Q&A with Blacklist’s againstallodds:

Q: This spot is a bit of a creative departure for you. Can you tell me about attracted you to the job?

againstallodds: To create this spot we were given a piece of leather and a print campaign and were told bring it to life. This spot is like nothing else on our reel and we were excited to create something we had not tried before. We really wanted to build on the dimensionality of the forms in the leather so that everything really moved naturally but had a enough definition and abstraction to draw people in. We were really attracted to the mixture of darkness and nakedness. It really seemed like something we wanted to see move.


Q: The texture of the leather is very detailed. Tell me a bit about how you created this look, what tools you used and if there were any challenges.

againstallodds: We began this project with a photo shoot with real actors and the leather laid out on a flat bed. We took moving references with naked models to show how the body moves and the leather reacts to different light setups. Then we edited everything together to make a rough timing. Animation and simulation followed and was a mixture of Maya nCloth and Houdini to make everything come together. The simulation was a great start and gave dimension to the leather but we really wanted to have control over some of the smaller details such as muscle and bone and they were getting lost in the simulation, so Milford lighting developed a special shader that took information from a more detailed mesh of the body and applied it to the leather simulated cloth.


Q: It’s a very sexy spot too. Can you tell me a bit about that?

againstallodds: That was something we really worked hard to keep. Doing sexy in 3d can be a tricky thing. Since everybody knows how humans move and are very sensitive to what’s not right even the most subtle movement can prove to be hard to recreate. We were very lucky to have a great photo model strip off and go through the timings and poses to block everything out so that we had great reference in the animation phase. On top of that we worked a lot with the shadows and lighting to reveal and cover sections of the body so that the silhouette and feminine curves really stood out and that the rest of the body became abstract.