John Varvatos' New Star USA Fragrance "Sixth Sense"

Visual effects and animation studio, Light of Day (www.lightofday.tv) recently teamed up with John Varvatos to create a commercial featuring a six-fingered hand to promote their new fragrance, John Varvatos Star USA. The commercial idea stemmed from the fragrance's tagline, "The New Fragrance For Your Sixth Sense."

The TV spot features a shot of fingers on a man's hand counting along with rock music in the background. The hand proceeds to put up a peace sign and the new fragrance's packaging is shown. As realistic as the hand appears it has one more finger than usual, allowing it to count up to six. The hand and its movements are so realistic that one may not immediately notice anything out of the ordinary the first time watching it.

This attention grabbing idea was originally displayed in a print ad of the hand holding up a peace sign. Using those ads as a reference, the Light of Day visual effects team was able to turn the 2D idea into a realistic and natural looking moving hand.

"A dexterous six-fingered hand doesn't really exist in nature, so the challenge was creating a six-fingered hand that seamlessly looked real and moved in a believable way," said Dino Tsaousis, a flame artist for Light of Day who did the compositing and finishing work for the Varvatos commercial. "We had to play around with the palm and fingers to make it look anatomically correct as far as how the muscles moved."

Tsaousis explained further that he even used his own hand as a reference when trying to determine natural muscle movements of the hand.

"Between the finger, the palm, and the way the muscles move, there was about three or four different pieces that I stitched together to create the hand," Tsaousis said. "After that I had to rebuild the background and do some re-lighting for the feeling the client was looking for."

From a technical standpoint, Autodesk Lustre was used for the coloring and Flame was used for the compositing and finishing.