Pairing a silly (hair-raising?) concept with an earnest ballad makes for plenty of feel-good smiles in this spot for Virgin Australia called “Up, Up and Toupee” with MPC creating/grooming the unconventional lead character.

MPC CG supervisor Fabian Frank: “You’d think the biggest challenge on this spot was simulating long hair, but designing a character without legs, arms or face from a bunch of hairs that the audience would engage with was the true challenge.

“We started by creating character design sheets that would outline what the toupee would be able to do. How do the wings form? How do we suggest facial expressions by using strands of hairs to outline eyes and eyebrows?

“We even explored dynamic animated poses of how the toupee could roll itself up to do a barrel roll or playfully dive through clouds”.

“The toupee was created entirely in Houdini using proprietary grooming and simulation tools, which meant the grooming, simulation, and rendering was in one software package, allowing for quicker iterations and more efficient workflows.”
 

Client: Virgin Australia

Production: Revolver
Director: Gary Freedman
MD: Michael Ritchie
Producer: Alex Kember
DOP: Germaine McMicking

Agency: DDB Sydney
Producer: Tash Johnson
Senior Copywriter: Richard Shaw
Senior Art Director: Jeremy Hogg
Creative Director: David Jackson
CCO: Tara Ford

VFX/post: MPC
Producer: Phil Whalley
CG Sup: Fabian Frank
2D VFX Sup: Jonathan Box
Animation Lead: Chris Welsby
Shoot Supervisor: Andrew Lodge
Line Producer: Sadia Memon
Line supervisor: Kunal Sarkar
Comp: Ed Taylor, Mithun Jacob Alex, Mauro Nodari, Sabanayagam Veeras
Roto: Sudev S, Ravisankar S, Muthuvishnu S, Joslin Job Mathew, Ekanathan Kuppan, Amit Kumar Shukla,
Clean up: Vagampalli Yasasvini, V Vamsi Krishna Reddy, Trishool Pani Mishra, Manu PS, Karthikkeyan M D
Animators: David Bryan, Ed Sherwood, James Bown, Venkatesan D, Shiny Rajan
FX: Tushar Kewlani, Arnau Gilabert, Rob Richardson, Radu Ciubotariu
Concept: Michelle Tolo
Asset: Silvia Bartolli, Vignesh Sivakumar, Sunil Manohar Mohapatra, Sourodeep Dey, Selva Kumar K, Ria Banerjee, Kalaiarasu Puhalendhi, Jayadeep Chandran, Harshitha V V, Gopikapriya M,
Tracking: Anirudh Kurve, Ankit Dheraj Toppo, Avaneetharan Karuppa, Elangovan Ganeshan, Karthick K, Muruganantham T, Pabitra Kumar Saho, Satyaraj A, Shridhar Bhat, Shristi Sanyal, Sreenivasa Aditya, Tejashwini N
Groom and Lighting: Kiril Mirkov
DMP: Srinivas Achary, Shanmugavel V, Sachin Dhapudkar S, Radhakrishnan R, Mudraboina Vamsi Krish
Lighting: Alessandro Granella, Flavia Minnone, Aritra Kumar Sarkar, Persie Erach Jalgaonw
Rigging: Maximilian Mallmann, Amar Chundavadra
Colorist: Jean-Clément Soret

Edit: Arc Edit Australia
Editor: Pete Siberras

Music: “Up Where We Belong” Joe Cocker, Jennifer Warnes