Talk about your bad hair days. Even on those Tuesday mornings when a baseball cap seems the most merciful solution, most of us have never had to contend with a lion or a tornado on our heads.

Neil Williamson of Calibre says there were three objectives for the never-been-done-before Finesse spots. First, the animation had to look cool. Second, the spots had to include the manipulation of moving hair. Third, the hair had to stay beautiful throughout. Sounds easy enough, you say?

The spot is a hybrid approach to effects design – a blend of live action, practical effects, high-end 2D and 3D animation and stop-motion techniques. When it came down to it, Williamson says several post companies in l.a. ran screaming from the job.

Of the two parts, Williamson says the ‘lion queen’ involved the most elements. Aside from a host of hair pieces that had to be fixed to the model’s head, the effect required about 40 different elements seamlessly blended.

‘Tornado’ used fewer elements, but was equally challenging. ‘For the tornado itself we used 50% rig and 50% computer-generated hair to get it to look properly. The rig was a spinning cone of hair but it didn’t look real enough so we used a computer-generated tornado of hair.’

A team made up from members of both of Calibre’s production units used Particle System technology and Flame to create the ‘hair-raising’ effects. ‘Flame was a major component,’ says Williamson. ‘A few of its capabilities were critical and it’s the only tool we could have used.’ MEA