“What’s priceless to you?” By Lionel Messi | MASTERCARD

What's Priceless to you? For some, it may be a shared experience with a loved one. For others, it may be the environment and a newfound passion to save the planet. Whatever it is, this question is a personal one — but for Lionel Messi, the answer is simple: doing what he loves.

To celebrate Mastercard’s sponsorship of the UEFA Champion’s League men’s final, we created a film that showed 13 year old Messi’s first flight from Argentina to Spain on his way to play for Barcelona FC. In order to bring his emotional journey to life, we used an AI-powered VFX method that cross-analyzed archival material and historical references of Lionel Messi to recreate young Messi’s face. The digital image was composited, then integrated onto our real-life actor – fusing our cutting-edge technology with a powerful performance.

Press: Adweek | ESPN

Below is a side-by-side comparison of our actor (left) and our digital recreation of young Messi’s face (right).

GCD: Ethan Schmidt, Pebble Goh