How Did They Do That? Inside Acura's TSX Sport Wagon Commercial

very well done, especially with the stop gap animation techniques.

would look even cooler if it was a RWD car commercial....the car is understeering at the end and you can clearly see the front wheels spinning faster than the rear wheels coming out of the turn.

When I saw the original footage, my first thought was "CG can do this." Then I saw the clay-mation style jerkiness and realized... they *should* have done it with CG instead of using the flint knives and bear skins approach.

For a hint at how realistic CG can be, see the movies Avatar, Terminator II, Lord of the Rings, yadda, yadda. CG would have yielded much better results. Maybe they didn't have the budget?

Actually, it can be more expensive to do a spot like this practically rather than with CG. In an age when anything can be faked with CG, I think there's something to be said for doing something for real with practical effects.

MBCLS07 said "..I think there's something to be said for doing something for real [instead of CG]..."

I agree! And that's "it would have looked better with CG, but we decided to do it for real instead." Whatever floats your boat.

CG is better than real life, I don't think so!

Avatar was extremely soft(especially in 3D)
T2 was great for the time, but the animation was not smooth
LOTR used real actors that were digitally manipulated to alter their size.

Good CG is extremely expensive and time consuming. Would you spend $10 million for two minutes of CG footage that will be cut down to a 30 to 15 second spot, in this economy for a car that will be lucky to sell 40,000/year?

No!

You mean the one with the Honda Accord wagon in it? I don't know how they did that but it is pretty cool.

They should have used a dummy inside the car. This way the driver would not look so jerky between shots.

This is the dumbest ad. FYI Acura, a front wheel drive sedan is NOT a sportscar.

sportsbike, those are RACE PREPPED vehicles. The Acura TSX, again, is no sportscar. It is a FWD sedan with some "sporty" attributes. But at the end of the day, like most Hondas, it is nose heavy.

sportsbike, below are the TSX's weight distributions (sourced from acura.com). You can't see these and tell me a sports car would have so much weight over the front wheels (that results in understeer). The V6 front/rear ratio is horrendous.

* 60 / 40: 4-Cyl. AT
* 59 / 41: 4-Cyl. MT
* 62 / 38: V-6

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don't bother arguing with him. He thinks that a rear spoiler on his fwd corolla will add 5hp lol.

Who cares? The TSX isn't the type of car that Acura is attempting to portray in that commercial. But they know that dumb Americans don’t know any better, and will instantly consider the TSX as a barnstormer based off an Acura commercial.

It’s actually quite genius. Lexus does the same thing by showing an IS250 drifting. Lexus please, the IS250 is so slow, and has such a weak engine, that only a professional driver with years of experience can do the stuff that they have the car doing in those commercials. That, CGI and American will come running and defend them to the death as superior handling cars. I’ve seen this before, its happening right now with Lexus.

acura cars handle beautifully, even though the tsx doesnt have it, the SH-AWD is the most advanced awd system out right now and its f*ckin nuttsssss.

was driving around in a TL sh-awd , looks like sh*t but its an incredible drive. I believe it also has a rear wheel bias in the TL.

If acura cars werent ugly as sin they would really be something to talk about. IMO nothing compares to their interior and tech