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Even though origami is the flavor of the moment—even McDonald’s is doing it—the sheer amount of labor involved in producing this Special K stop motion spot makes it rather impressive. It was directed by Peter Sluszka at New York-based Hornet Inc.

There’s a making of video in which you can listen to ad agency and marketing peope waxing eloquent about work that they didn’t do. The director Sluszka offers the best comment in the video: “What it really requires is hours of people folding paper.”

CREDITS
Production Companies: Hornet Inc/Blinkink
Director: Peter Sluszka
Executive Producer: Jan Stebbins
Producer: Zack Kortright
Line Producer: Joel Kretschman
Editor: Anita Chao
Art Director: Mandy Smith
Director of Photography: Ivan Abel
Lead Compositors: Peter Fink, John Harrison
Compositors: Adam Yost, Yussef Cole
Roto Artists: Ted Wiggins, Rafael Mayrhofer
Storyboard Artist: Carlos Ancalmo
Motion Control Operator: Richard Coppola
Gaffer: Michael Yetter
Best Boy Electric: Casey Wooden
3rd Electric: Jarod Kloiber
Key Grip: Matt Walker
Best Boy Grip: Matt Cryan, Brian Yost
3rd Grip: Bob Blankmeir
Animators: Hayley Morris, Matt Somma, Kevin Coyle
Fabricators: Connie Chan, Ben Kress, Ben Friesen, Peter Erickson, Junko Shimzu, Michaela Olsen
Art Deptartment Assistant: Kevin Coyle
Food Stylist: Elizabeth Bell
Food Stylist Assistant: Mireya Acierto, Brett Regot
Production Assistant: Tim Kuhl, Eric Duke, Rafael Mayrhofer
1st AC: Nate Spengler
Phantom Tech: Mark Sashara

Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett
Creative Director: Karen Reed and Natasha Ali
Executive Creative Director: Mylene Pollock
Copywriter: Liam Bushby and Alison Stevens
Art Director: Liam Bushby and Alison Stevens
Account Team: Carly Pritchard, Dominique Gomes, Sofia Sarkar
Project Manager: Gaynor Goldring
Planner (Creative Agency): Olivia Heywood and Charlie Kirkbride
Agency Producer: Serena Schellenberg

Titmouse created this lively spot to promote a collaboration between Lancôme and designer Alber Elbaz (who makes a cameo). Watch in HD for full effect. Production credits to come.

Here’s a new way of promoting an animated movie: having a voice actor dress up as their character for a talk show appearance. That’s what Steve Carell did on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last week when he appeared as Despicable Me 2′s Gru.

(Thanks, Jen Hurler, via Cartoon Brew’s News Submission Forum)

For this summer station ident, Cartoon Network hired various international animators and commercial studios to animate ten seconds’worth of their network’s characters. The animation was later stitched together into the 60-second piece you see above. The artists and studios that contributed were Alex Grigg (England), Eamonn O’Neill (England), Impactist (US), CRCR (France), Awesome Inc. (US), and Rubber House (Australia). It’s encouraging to see this kind of creative cross-pollination happening between the commercial mainstream and indie animation communities. It marks the second time in recent months that CN has collaborated with independent artists, the first being David OReilly’s episode of Adventure Time.

A Sudafed commercial may not be the pinnacle of artistic achievement, but the care and attention to detail in this commercial elevates it beyond typical pharmaceutical marketing. Auckland, New Zealand-based Assembly created the :30-second ad “Big Head” for the JWT Sydney agency. It was directed by Matt von Trott with modeling and animation by Josh Fourt-Wells, Geoff Kirk-Smith and Gary Sullivan.

The ad is refreshingly simple—just one shot until the cut to the product at the end—with strong visual concepts and loose animation that is animated on twos for enhanced cartoon effect. The character who makes the silly face at the end and pushes the cup behind the water cooler with his foot is a delightful and unexpected bit of characterization that is all too rare in advertising nowadays.

Here’s a recent car commercial for the Peugeot 208 produced by Partizan and commmissioned by Y&R Brazil, where the car outperforms the cast of the 1960s Hanna-Barbera TV series Wacky Races. While it’s kind of fun to see the characters and their outlandish vehicles being translated into live-action, it’s more than a bit horrifying seeing these real-life versions of the characters suffering ultra-realistic crashes and fiery explosions. At least Muttley makes it through in one piece.

CREDITS
Client: Peugeot
Product: Peugeot 208
Title: Wacky Races
Agency: Y&R Brasil
Creative VP: Rui Branquinho
Creative Director: Victor Sant’Anna/ Rui Branquinho
Creatives: Fabio Tedeschi/ Leandro Camara/ Felipe Pavani/ Victor Sant’Anna/ Rui Branquinho
Agency Producer: Nicole Godoy
Production Company: Partizan/ Movie & Art
Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
DOP: Damien Morisot
Executive Producer: Douglas Costa/ David Stewart, Paulo Dantas
Editor: Bill Smedley
Post production: Electric Theatre Collective
Music: A9 Audio
Music Producer: Apollo 9/ Henrique Racz
Sound Design/Final Mix: Factory UK

For comparison, here’s the opening of the original 1968 television series:

Here’s an recent car commercial for the Peugeot 208 by Partizan, where the car outperforms the cast of Wacky Races. While it’s kinda fun to see these characters and their outlandish vehicles being translated into live-action, it’s a bit horrifying seeing these real-life versions of the characters getting into this ultra-realistic crashes and fiery explosions. At least puppet Muttley made it through in one piece.

Credits
Client: Peugeot
Product: Peugeot 208
Title: Wacky Races
Agency: YR Brasil
Creative VP: Rui Branquinho
Creative Director: Victor Sant’Anna/ Rui Branquinho
Creatives: Fabio Tedeschi/ Leandro Camara/ Felipe Pavani/ Victor Sant’Anna/ Rui Branquinho
Agency Producer: Nicole Godoy
Production Company: Partizan/ Movie & Art
Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
DOP: Damien Morisot
Executive Producer: Douglas Costa/ David Stewart, Paulo Dantas
Editor: Bill Smedley
Post production: Electric Theatre Collective
Music: A9 Audio
Music Producer: Apollo 9/ Henrique Racz
Sound Design/Final Mix: Factory UK

For comparison, here’s the opening to the original 1968 television series:

If there’s anything that can both dazzle my senses and make me crave Oreos, it’s this 90-second animation for Oreo’s new “Wonderfilled” campaign, directed by Martin Allais and his production company Studio Animal. Animated to a jaunty tune performed by Owl City, the spot is filled with wonderfully stylized animation, a fantastic sense of design, fun transitions, and eye-popping colors from beginning to end. And much like the classic commercials of yesteryear, it makes me WANT to buy the product it’s selling.

CREDITS
Global Marketing Communication:  Jill Baskin
Brand Marketing Director: Janda Lukin

Agency Credits
Chief Creative Officer: Joe Alexander
Group Creative Director: Jorge Calleja
Creative Director: David Muhlenfeld
Creative Director: Magnus Hierta
Senior Art Director: Brig White
Planning Director: John Gibson
Managing Director: Steve Humble
Senior Broadcast Producer: Kathy Lippincott
Broadcast Producer: Heather Tanton
Broadcast Junior Producer: Caroline Helms

Production Company: Studio Animal
Director: Martin Allais
Producer: Maria Soler Chopo
Illustration: Martin Allais
Storyboards: Martin Allais
Animatic: Pere Hernández, Javi Vaquero, Matt Deans
Animator: Pere Hernández, Javi Vaquero, Pablo Navarro, Dani Alcaraz
Tracing and color:Ezequiel Cruz, Macarena Ortega, Eva Puyuelo, Joel Morales
Compositing: Santi Justribó Martin Allais

Music
Music (performed by): Owl City (Adam Young)
Voiceover talent: Owl City (Adam Young)
Original Music and Lyrics: David Muhlenfeld (English Major, LLC)

Andy Rementer is an illustrator and animator who studied at The University of the Arts and produces illustrations, prints, zines and animation.

An ad, “Gator Behavior,” animated by Andy, is simple, fun, and smile-inducing, just like Andy’s illustration work:

Compare the commercial below, which features some of Andy’s characters modeled in 3D, animated by a team that was probably put together by an ad agency. I can’t help but think that this spot’s characters could have had much more life in them in the hands of one 2D animator (such as Andy), as demonstrated in the above “Gator” video. Drawn animation seems to be the logical choice for animating designs like these:

You can see more videos from Andy here, paintings and sketchbook work here, and check out his portfolio here.

Reel FX and Relativity Media are sparing no expense when it comes to promoting Free Birds, Reel FX’s first animated feature which will be released theatrically in November. At CinemaCon, the Las Vegas convention for theater owners, they unveiled a 3D-printed display of the film’s main characters, who are voiced by Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson. It certainly puts your average cardboard-based theater display to shame, and gives one optimism that they’re putting a high level of effort and care into the actual film itself. These photos of the display appeared on Collider.com.

(h/t, Sarah Marino)

These two pieces of animation from Iran caught me by surprise because they are so different from the rest of the animation I’ve seen from that country. The first is a commercial for Lina Luke snack food directed by Moin Samadi. It has been accepted into this year’s Annecy Animation Festival:

The next is an energetic and funny hand-drawn piece called Evolution by Mehdi Alibeygi.

“EVOLUTION” CREDITS
Director, Writer, Animator: Mehdi Alibeygi
Executive Producer: Moin Samadi
Sound and Music: Armin Bahari
Composite: Sare Shafipour
Logo Designer: Amin Maftoon
Produced by Raiavin Studio

Millions of people are likely to be familiar with the colorful cartoon bears that savor wiping their butts with softer than average toilet paper. Joanna Quinn is the character designer and animator behind the original commercials that feature the hand drawn versions of these characters. The Charmin bears have recently been transitioned to CGI, arguably resulting in less charm. There’s nothing wrong with the new ads, but they just can’t supply the human element that the graphite smeared drawings of the originals carried with them directly from Joanna’s pencil to the television screen. The production company responsible for the new approach is not Joanna’s, although she is credited as a creative consultant.

I’m curious about the progression that the designs took from Joanna’s pencil animation to Joanna’s animation cleaned up and colored in a slicker fashion (see the “new look” commercials on her website), to CG characters, and what the driving forces behind the decisions to change the art over time could have been.

If the original designs had been created with a slick commercial sheen from the beginning, like your average cereal mascot ad, then there would be nothing to discuss here. But because they started with the distinctive pencil work of Joanna Quinn, it seems strange to buff out the roughness and individuality over time until eventually removing her unique stamp from the work entirely. Is it simply an inevitable progression? An example of typical corporate decision making? Does slicker work sell more rolls?

Fortunately, besides creating commercials, Joanna’s larger interest is undoubtedly creating her personal, funny, and expressively drawn films. Above are stills from her short film Dreams and Desires: Family Ties which she directed and animated with additional animation by Andy McPherson.

On her Beryl Productions website you can see a selection of production art from some of her films such as the above layout drawings from Famous Fred, which is also available there to watch in full.

Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang have been spokestoons for the insurance giant MetLife for nearly 30 years. The ads are rarely anything beyond the ordinary, but this latest one has an inventive conceptual approach that I liked.

Ogilvy & Mather-owned Redworks produced the spot, and Polish studio Platige Image provided visual effects/post work.

CREDITS
Director: Sam Tootal
Agency: Ogilvy + Mather
Production house: Redworks
Postproduction house: Platige Image
Producer: Kasia Chodak

(Thanks, Michael Blake)

Fans of Aleksandr Petrov (The Cow, The Old Man and the Sea) will appreciate this ad he created for Russian Railways using his trademark paint-on-glass technique. The spot celebrates the 175th anniversary of railways in Russia.

I just caught up with these cool-looking new Cheeerios Kids animated commercials, which began appearing on Aol this past September. I love the retro look. I’m particularly grateful “Big G” didn’t abandon these advertising icons – who were created in 1953, first designed by Disney animator Tom Oreb. New York-based Mike Luzzi was animator and designer on these new spots for General Mills. Says Luzzi:

“I got to re-design the Cheerios Kid, a character popular in the sixties. I also did all background design, some character animation and After Effects animation for the projector shots. This spot was produced by Pat-Man Studios. We did all animation in Flash and final compositing in After Effects.”

(Thanks, Frank Forte)

Making the rounds today is this incredible TV spot for French music website Deezer from art collective CRCR (we posted several of their pieces within the past year). This time they are working with illustrator/director McBess. The result is 30-seconds of joy:

(Thanks, Wicker Biscuit)

Here’s all the nutritional information about Good & Plenty candies you’ll ever need, spelled out by the candy itself. Animated by New York-based David Amichai with 4 boxes of candy, 3 lights, 2 poster boards, 1 animator, and about 100 hours of work. Shot with the Canon 7D using Dragonframe.

I heard the oddest story about the Nike Just Do It campaign the other day. Apparently 'Just Do It' was inspired by the final words of killer Gary Gilmore, 'Let's do it' - before he was shot by firing squad in 1970s Utah. Adman Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy changed the 'Let's' to 'Just' to give it better emphasis. "I'm sure they didn't want anyone to know that that was the genesis of the

Viewers of Beyoncé’s half-time Super Bowl performance—all 111 million of you—might have noticed that it started with this animated intro promoting Pepsi’s sponsorship:

No credits have been released, but Cartoon Brew has learned that the sequence was directed by animation filmmaker Michael Langan. We featured his RISD graduation short Doxology as the very first-ever episode of Cartoon Brew TV.

(Thanks, Karl Cohen)

For a short period of time during the mid-1950s, the Disney company allowed corporations to use its characters to sell products. There’s some interesting history behind this, and if you’re interested in learning more, I’d recommend this two-part series by historian Jim Korkis (part one, part two).

Among the companies that took advantage of this opportunity was American Motors, maker of Nash and Hudson cars. (Interesting sidenote: the company’s president at the time was Mitt Romney’s father, George W. Romney.) Yesterday, YouTube user ZarakPhoto uploaded a fine collection of the American Motors spots featuring Jiminy Cricket and Mickey Mouse. I’ve seen other prints of these spots, but these are easily the crispest versions I’ve encountered and worth a look even if you’ve seen them before:

Here’s an upload from another YouTuber with a lower-quality version of one of the other spots featuring Song of the South characters:

The commercials were designed by Tom Oreb, who in my humble opinion, was the most versatile and skilled designer during the Golden Age of Hollywood animation. Oreb’s assistant art director and layout artist on these spots was Vic Haboush, who was a dear friend and mentor to me.

This is Oreb’s model sheet of the “commercial” Mickey Mouse, which Vic and I discovered in his personal collection many years ago. Click for a larger version:

How does a traditional animation studio promote itself in a CG-obsessed world? Austin, Texas-based Powerhouse Animation Studios, which produced the 2D cut-scenes in the Epic Mickey games, does it with a heaping side of humor. They made this tongue-in-cheek studio promo, cheekily titled “Against the Z-Axis,” that advertises their “pure, organic, traditional, AMERICAN animation.”

There’s something profoundly delightful about this early-Seventies Burger King ad featuring a mustachioed octopus selling Whoppers. It’s absent the high-concept pretensions of modern advertising filled with cooler-than-thou irony and sarcasm. I’d say it’s as genuine, fun and pleasant as a fast food commercial can be. Now someone please find the color version and post it online.

(Thanks, Dann Pryce, via Cartoon Brew’s Facebook page)

Brew reader Leo Santos introduced me to the fantastic work of Brazilian animator Daniel Og, who animated this series of eight 30-second spots for Canal Futura—one for each of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals:

1. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,
   
2. Achieving universal primary education,
   
3. Promoting gender equality and empowering women,
   
4. Reducing child mortality rates,
   
5. Improving maternal health,
   
6. Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases,
   
7. Ensuring environmental sustainability, and
   
8. Developing a global partnership for development.
   

Og’s eccentric animation style tweaks the conventional patterns of movement. His characters jolt around the screen with an aggressive staccato edge, and everything’s just a little wobbly, but make no mistake, it’s skillful artistry done for effect.

After seeing these spots, I checked out Og’s reel, and while there are hints of the individualistic quirks that make these commercials special, it’s clear that Og’s creativity flourishes most when he works within his personal funky contour-line drawing style. Here’s hoping we get to see a lot more of that because it’s quite unique.