Rushes post amusing trio of Carex spots

Product: Carex Hand Wash
Titles: ‘Hair Gunk,’ ‘Fake Tan,’ ‘Mud Mask’
Agency: BDH/TBWA
Agency Producers: Caroline Deery & Lou Vasey
Director: Barney Cokeliss
Production Company: Godman
Rushes Producer: Sonia Ralton
C-Reality: Adrian Seery
3D: Craig Travis, Jonathan Privett & Luke Millar
Flame: Emir Hasham

Tuesday September 14th 2004

Carex recently called upon Rushes to carry out the post work on an entertaining trio of commercials for Carex Hand Wash, which clearly demonstrate how useful the newly packaged product can be.

In the first of the three, entitled ‘Hair Gunk,’ we see an attractive young woman preparing to go out for the evening. She stands in front of her mirror, applying gunk to her hair, but is unable to stop fiddling with it. In the Carex bottle, which is handily placed on the shelf above the sink, two characters, or ‘squirts,’ form in the purple liquid and start to bemoan the number of times that they have had to witness such a scene, which always follows the same format; ‘do hair, wash hands, go out.’

The second spot, ‘Fake Tan,’ provides the Carex pair with something to smile about. A beautiful woman enters the bathroom, wrapped only in a towel and -as previously - a bottle of Carex is perfectly positioned above the sink. As she drops her towel and starts to apply fake tan to her naked body, the ‘squirts’ melt with longing inside the bottle.

The final offering, ‘Mud Mask,’ is a very amusing take on the same theme. This time the woman that enters the bathroom is in a dressing down with her hair in a towel and her face covered in a lurid green mud mask. The ‘squirts’ screech and cower in horror as the terrifying apparition reaches for the hand wash. The tagline for each of these great commercials points out that Carex now comes, “in girlie bottles for your bathroom.”

Rushes’ Emir Hasham says: “The Carex ‘’squirts’ provided a technical challenge as we had to make a convincing Liquid character that still contained enough “form” to be really expressive. The squirts are viewed at closer range than ever before and play a more central role to the comedy of the spots. To convey the extra character more detail was added to the eyes and mouth and the texture set up, which consists of 5 passes for each ‘squirt’ dealing with colour, reflection, transparency, refractions and highlights.

The ‘squirts’ were animated in Maya by Craig Travis and Luke Millar, modelled by Kim Fersling and composited by Emir Hasham.”