PDI/DreamWorks created a CGI fairy tale for the Latin American market with the new Life Takes Visa spot for New York agency BBDO. The spot will be aired in Latin America in English, Spanish and Portuguese. In this modern take on the Three Little Pigs, the pigs get wiser and wiser as they successively build houses out straw, sticks and finally, after the wolf has huffed and puffed and blown the houses down, brick, bought with a Visa card at the local hardware store. The end shot shows the wolf using his Visa to buy a bulldozer at the same store. In order to build the spot, a 25-person team at PDI worked for three months animating the CG spot. According to the animators a big computer graphics challenge was producing a believable house of straw. It had to look real, said director Cliff Boule. With the sticks, it was not quite as complex, but to give the straw the right look and weight when it is blown down, that is extremely difficult to accomplish. A giant boon to the team came from their recent experience on the feature film SHREK. For the Visa commercial, the animal musculature, skin and fur, as well as the natural dynamics, such as the wind blowing in the trees and grass, were created with PDIs proprietary SHREK technology.
