"Fabio is an actual real-life famous person that my mom is still very much in love with," laughs Allen. "Working with him on Old Spice turned out to be a great opportunity to direct and we had a blast! Also, Fabio let me go to his house and ride motorcycles. I'm not sure which is the bigger accomplishment yet. The jury's still out." Allen adds that it was serendipitous to direct his first TV commercial for Old Spice, the brand whose popular and award-winning advertising he's been instrumental in creating.

Andy Bate, our Shoot Supervisor/Lead 2D Artist, relates that Fabio was a good sport and a lot of fun to work with. "He gave a great performance with a 2-and-a-half foot puppeteered version of the hair we had on set, so the hair we created had to measure up and have personality. We needed to convey the hair was a bit of a comedian playing the ukulele and serving Fabio a cocktail."

Not surprisingly, The Mill team used Fabio's own famous hair for reference. "Of course his hair is not as long in reality, but we set out to keep the natural gradient of color and thickness the same and extend it to 30-feet long," explains Robert Sethi, Head of 3D, The Mill "When you look at hair blowing in the wind it tends to separate out. We tried to have it blowing in heavy wind with texture and movement, but keeping the strands together more."

Although initially shooting the hair in camera was discussed, The Mill team ended up simulating most of it in CG and rendering it using an inhouse hair shader. "It was a great to be able to match his hair's shading that close," Sethi says.

Phil Crowe, The Mill's Creative Director on the spot, concludes: "We've been lucky enough to work with Craig as a creative director and enjoyed seeing him ensconced comfortably in the director's chair. As always, collaborating with Wieden on Old Spice was loads of fun and a great team effort."