The rules of the AI Deathmatch are simple: our EP, Nick, throws down a creative brief. Working part-time around active client jobs and our own lives, Jay and Digby’s teams go head-to-head to see who can deliver the best execution by the end of the following week.
Because these sprints are tight, we aren’t trying to polish every pixel to perfection. Instead, it’s an opportunity to stress-test workflows, push boundaries, and figure out how to deliver actual value for our clients.
For our third challenge, Nick steers the teams back into live-action and into the world of photorealistic animals and pet food advertising with a brief titled “Top Chops.” Designed as a creatively open yet highly technical showcase, the challenge comes with a few unique parameters.
ROUND THREE BRIEF | TOP CHOPS
Create a high-impact, 30-second spec commercial for a premium pet food brand (Top Chops), while simultaneously experimenting across a diverse creature-VFX portfolio.
The goal is to showcase our ability to render hyper-realistic animal anatomy, fur/feather/skin dynamics, and behavioural physics.
Jay’s Path: A Subversive Feast & Cascading Textures
Jay took a clever, slightly subversive twist on the brief. Instead of separating the wild and domestic phases, he introduced familiarly-packaged generic pet food products directly into the wild habitats.
Watching apex predators in their natural environments consuming processed, un-natural-looking packaged food created a brilliant, comedic juxtaposition. It perfectly set up the domestic reprise while driving home the core message: real animals need real food.
Technically, Jay leaned heavily into premium CPG commercial tropes:
- He simulated high-end food photography, capturing various raw ingredients cascading through space in ultra-slow motion. This was a massive test of AI texture rendering and fluid/particle dynamics.
- Jay also went a step further on the brand strategy, pitching a unique concept for a hyper-premium, ‘HelloFresh-style’ bespoke pet food subscription service.
The resulting execution felt entirely authentic to the premium pet care category. It proved that the team can handle the glossy, hyper-real aesthetics required by major global commercial brands, while keeping a firm grip on sharp, conceptual storytelling.
Digby’s Path: Hyper Realistic Animal Kingdoms
Digby took a more traditional approach to the brief, focused on cinematic world-building. He seamlessly transported the viewer from one striking animal kingdom to the next before bringing the narrative home to a premium, domestic setting - albeit one nestled in a beautiful, remote part of the world.
What made Digby’s execution stand out was his choice of subjects, which served as a masterclass in AI texture and physics handling:
Rather than sticking to simple subjects, he deliberately tested the engine’s limits in portraying biomechanical versatility, by rendering the micro-details of an eagle’s feathers, the tough, leathery scales of a Komodo dragon, and the complex, fluffy fur of a majestic snow leopard.
He brought the entire campaign home with a brilliant, highly stylised comedic sign-off, featuring all three wild animals side-by-side in the final scene.
The final cut was a powerful showcase of premium world-building and technical delivery, proving that when guided by a veteran filmmaker, these tools can achieve the exact anatomical fidelity and cinematic scale that global CPG brands demand.
The Limitations
Let’s be completely transparent: because this was a part-time weekly sprint, we ran into several technical and narrative hurdles that we simply didn’t have the time to fully iron out.
There was a healthy amount of internal debate around Jay’s initial direction before he tied the sequence together. Ultimately, his script pivot highlighted his strength as a director - taking a topline brief, extracting the core message, and finding a more subversive way to land it. The iterative nature of the edit also revealed a structural gap: we realised we needed a crucial middle shot of the food packaging being delivered to seamlessly bridge the wild habitats with the macro food footage.
On Digby’s side, the final domestic reprise exposed the unpredictable nature of generative AI. Overall, the dog’s performance felt slightly off-key. Additionally, the sequence could have benefited from tighter art direction regarding the product packaging and its placement in the frame.
More than anything, this round highlighted a massive truth for us: you cannot rely on a single operator to do everything. To get a commercial spot across the line for a client, you still need a collaborative room of different specialists - directors, editors, producers, art directors, copywriters to step in where it matters most.
The Verdict
When it came down to making the final call, our EP, Nick, awarded the win to Digby.
Based on first appearances and the delivery of the core message, Digby’s execution stayed closer to the original brief. He also claimed some completely unprompted bonus points by creating an entire brand identity and guidelines document for the fictional Top Chops brand out of nowhere.
Ultimately though, it was his technical mastery of those complex animal textures - capturing the micro-movements of feathers, scales, and fur - that edged the victory his way for Round 3.
Props to Jay for also delivering a very tidy 15” c/d, which retained all the core messaging of the 30”.
The Brutal Reality of AI Creation
If there is one major takeaway from this challenge, it’s that the human director is more critical than ever. Mastering high-end AI production is an incredibly demanding discipline.
Because neural networks rely so heavily on random seeds, you can’t always troubleshoot issues with traditional logic or code. A minor prompt adjustment can completely shatter a previously working sequence, and every failed generation pass burns through real financial credit. That unpredictability is exactly why deep production experience is essential. When the AI refuses to cooperate, you need the veteran intuition to know exactly how and when to deploy traditional VFX patches, standard post-production fixes, and clever editing to bridge the gaps.
True mastery in this space isn’t prompt engineering; it’s deep editorial curation, traditional filmmaking craft, and workflow intuition.
Coming up Next
The creative brief for Deathmatch Round 4 is “The Cockpit.” The teams join forces in Round 4 to co-create a high-concept comedic commercial that subverts epic sci-fi blockbuster tropes to highlight everyday supermarket savings. The ad leans heavily on a dramatic misdirect: manipulating visuals and sound design to make a routine trip to the supermarket checkout feel like a high stakes life or death spaceship re-entry.
We can't wait to share it with you soon.
Behind the Scenes
We’ve trawled the project Discord channel, and pulled a few BTS images here for your perusal
Filed under AI Deathmatch