Press Release

Award-winning Los Angeles visual
effects and design company A52 today announced that Andy
Hall, hired last April as the company's CG supervisor.
directed the Honda Ridgeline "Mud Flap" spot from
advertising agency RPA which debuted yesterday during ABC's
coverage of Super Bowl XL.
The new spot features the classic „sexy girl‰ seen for the
past several decades on millions of pairs of truck mud flaps
coming to life to admire the unique attributes of the Honda
Ridgeline. When she opens the door to look inside, she sees
another mud flap icon ˆ the boisterous and hot-headed
animated cartoon character of Looney Tunes fame, Yosemite
Sam(TM) ˆ and she jumps inside and drives away with him as
the voiceover relates, "Even those who have spent their
entire lives around trucks have never seen a truck like
this."
"When I joined A52's extraordinary team last year," Hall
said, "the goal was to capitalize on the increasing
importance of CG in the creative world, and to pursue more
character-performance type work. To progress so quickly to
the point where I had this opportunity to direct such an
important, high-profile project for Honda and RPA is an
accomplishment we're all very appreciative and proud of."
"The fact that everything turned out so well was due in
large part to Andy's constant attention to the spot," said
Julie Dolson, RPA's senior producer. "It's a simple idea
and Andy's vision was to bring it to life, not complicate
it. Andy and everyone over at A52 delivered in a
ridiculously compressed timeframe without sacrificing
quality."
A52 Inferno artist Pat Murphy worked closely with Hall to
design the spot‚s opening scene showing a girl-adorned mud
flap on a moving truck. A52's CG team of Dan Gutierrez and
Max Ulichney created the girl, the photo-real mudflap, and a
rubberized, textured version of the Honda logo in Maya, and
Murphy's 2D team, including Alicia Aguilera, composited all
the CG elements in Inferno together with the moving road,
and applied various effects to heighten the realism of the
opening and closing scenes. "I never would have been able
to achieve the finished look of this spot without Pat's
contributions," Hall added.
Hall also filmed the Ridgeline at South Bay Studios in Long
Beach, with Eric Schmidt serving as his director or
photography. For some of those shots, a woman in a black
leotard was photographed moving around the truck. That
live-action footage of the moving woman was then used as
the basis for the movement of the animated girl.
A52's team also touched-up Yosemite Sam to put him behind
the wheel of the Ridgeline, sans his famous six-shooters.
The spot is set to continue airing over the weeks ahead.
Credits
For RPA, project credits include creative director Joe
Baratelli, art director Chuck Blackwell, copywriter Adam
Lowrey and producer Julie Dolson. The production company
representing A52‚s artists is Pecubu Productions, and David
Wolfson served as the project's line producer. A52's team
also included executive producer Mark Tobin and producer
Jenny Bright.
Company 3's Mike Pethel served as the colorist for the spot,
which was edited by Rock Paper Scissors‚ Brad Waskewich and
features music by Nick Armstrong and the Thieves, and sound
design by the team at Hum in Santa Monica. The spot's final
mix was engineered by Jimmy Hite of Margarita Mix de Santa
Monica.