In addition to women’s clothing, hair shades not found in nature and Madonna, one may add a trouble-making traveling tattoo to the list of basketball star Dennis Rodman’s bodily adornments, courtesy of Toronto’s Dan Krech Productions.

dkp gave the ‘Bad As I Wanna Be’ Bull a suitably attitude- and appetite-driven tattoo for a new spot for u.s. client Carl’s Jr. burger chain and l.a.-based agency Mendelsohn/Zien, plucking the job out of the hands of half a dozen l.a. shops the way the commercial’s brazen tattoo snatches a huge Carl’s Jr. burger from Rodman’s grasp.

The 60-second spot features the lanky power forward swaggering into a seedy tattoo parlor with a sunflower-shaded do and a bit of lunch. While he proceeds to inhale the man-sized Carl’s Jr. Super Star burger, splattering condiments arouse the attention of a Bad Boy tattoo who becomes mobile and travels over Rodman’s arms and shoulders on his gluttonous mission.

As the tattoo stealthily follows the path of the burger, ducking behind a tank top or behind a neck, he ends up splayed across Rodman’s forehead and close-up shots reveal the detail of skin texture and color beneath the expressive tattoo. He then rockets down to Rodman’s hand and swipes the burger, swallowing it whole.

Searching for his lost meal, a feduddled Rodman looks down, revealing Carl’s Jr.’s adorable smiling star logo on top of his processed head.

The oddly versatile tag line advises: ‘If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face.’

dkp was awarded the special effects job in February when it tested a new technique to bring the tattoo realistically to life, winning over creative director Jordin Mendelsohn in the process.

Krech, who was special effects director for the spot, says a good deal of research went into the particular properties of tattoos, and ultimately dkp developed a method of tinting the live action and using articulated mattes to pull skin-colored texture through the live action, resulting in a perfect ‘electronic tattoo.’

dkp created a 3D model of Rodman using Prisms software and motion-tracked the live action, directed by Justin Klarenbeck of Dream Quest Films in Santa Monica and shot over three days in l.a.

Animation was texture-mapped onto the shape of Rodman’s curves and contours and each scene was motion-tracked to match the moving camera.

Magnets, a component of Prisms which allows points on a 3D surface to be displaced, was used to move the skin surface where needed. Effects were executed using dkp’s Infinity Optics system, which accommodated the heavy 2D and 3D animation and compositing required. Ted Rogers produced the spot, with Paul Clark responsible for 3D animation, Brian Howald and Ron Marinic sharing Matador paint duties, and Terry Dale and Mike Morey compositing.

The spot was edited at Hollywood’s Red Car.

Ink and paint files were sent via isdn lines from l.a., with Darrel Van Citters of Burbank’s Renegade Films acting as cel animation director.

Despite tardy animation files, which meant compositing and processing were crammed into a four-day, four-workstation marathon, the project was finished ahead of schedule, with results as cheeky as the star himself.