Yes, This is A Computer Generated Character

Stockholm, Sweden-based vfx shop Important Looking Pirates (ILP) created the impressive animation for this Aco skin care product commercial. Yes, the woman is live-action in some parts of the spot too, but I was unable to identify when she was live-action and when she was computer animated until reading the description and watching the making of clip. Photoreal animation is commonplace today, and its last frontier—believable human beings for extended periods of time—doesn’t seem too far away anymore.

Below, ILP reveals how they used CGI:

We had the pleasure of working with Philippe Tempelman from Social Club on a new commercial for Aco. It is a beautiful 30 second skin care spot about how the different moments and emotions of life leaves a trail and affects our skin. Our work was to track and composite digital tears for two shots and also to create a smooth camera pull back when we go from a macro shot of the women’s eye. The latter turned out to be trickier than it might sound. We had to mix different takes of the filmed pullback in order to have crisp material that was in focus during the full length of the shot. We also did additional texture and 3d work in the macro part of the camera move. The refined material was was then project onto a CG double in order to create a smooth digital camera pull back.

(h/t, Todd Kelley)