This beautiful anti-gun violence TV spot was directed by French animator, designer and illustrator Caroline Attia. This is her first commercial for a U.S. client, Citizens for a Safer Minnesota and Martin/Williams Advertising in Minneapolis. The dialogue was originally conceived and recorded for a radio campaign. Peter Barg of Z Animation exec produced, and Attia designed and animated the entire spot in traditional 2D from her Paris studio (with color done in Photoshop CS3 and compositing/editing in After Effects CS3). Click here for a high rez version.

Paul Greer, who is the head of 3D at British design studio BDH, offers a description of how they made the title sequence for the BBC TV series British Style Genius by blending stop-motion with CG:

I thought you might like to know about the title sequence to the new BBC series “British Style Genius” that myself and my colleague, Orla Handley created recently at BDH.

Orla designed the concept and logo which was made up as an actual label which she then slowly and methodically unpicked and filmed in reverse using stop frame. We then took this animation and added the strings and threads in CG to give the impressions the label was being created by a giant off-screen sewing machine, the music by Metronomy helped with this feeling.

Orla took the basic animation and made 5 different versions to illustrate each fashion era described by each programme.

Editor’s Note: We’d like to welcome animation director Eric Goldberg in his first post as a regular Guest Brewer.

One night as I was Googling around indifferently, I thought to myself, “Gosh! I haven’t seen those marvelous Hubley Marky Maypo spots in at least 30 years. I wonder if I can find them on the net…” (I always think to myself with three dots at the end…) About a second and a half later, my search yielded four of them, on a website linked to the company that still makes and sells Maypo after all these years. These spots made a huge impression on me when I first saw them on TV - I was four - and they still do to this day. I know Jerry posted these a couple of years ago, but they’re certainly worth revisiting - and if you’ve never seen them before, enjoy! Here is the original spot:

I’d file them under the sub-heading of “The Pleasures of the Deceptively Simple.” Yes, they’re stylized. Yes, they’re graphic. They’re also masterpieces of communication and entertaining advertising, boasting many innovations and good old-fashioned traditional know-how. First, there’s the soundtrack: John and Faith Hubley recorded semi-improvised dialogue, charming mistakes and all, with their young son Mark, making the character sound like a real kid. Wow, what a concept!

The Hubleys later used this technique in their many personal short films - with their offspring in films like Moonbird and Cockaboody, and almost as talented adults like Dudley Moore and Dizzy Gillespie in films like The Hole and The Hat. Then there’s the design and animation. UPA-style flattened (practically vertical) perspectives, graphic curlicues that somehow behave like oatmeal, and character animation - most of it by master animator Emery Hawkins - that has, despite the stylization, form, weight, timing, tons of appeal, and all the other stuff you would expect in a beautifully crafted traditional production.

Here are links to three others: here, here and here. While the last spot doesn’t quite hold up for me, compared with the other three, they’re all marvelous, and, I think, worthy of some serious scrutiny. The Hubleys were masters at making the abstract appealing and accessible, and it’s great to see these ads again as the precursors and colleagues of their innovative Storyboard short films of the late 1950s and early ’60s, especially The Tender Game and The Adventures of *, decent prints of which I hope to upload in future posts. Thanks for playing.

Brew reader Graeme Edgeler points out an appealing Green Party animated spot created for elections in the UK earlier this year. Not only is the commercial inspired by Fifties animation design, it also seamlessly integrates animation and characters from two 1950s public domain industrial films: It’s Everybody’s Business and Stop Driving Us Crazy. It’d be cool to see more mashups between classic cartoons and new animation, just like how older songs are sampled and remixed by contemporary musicians.

Pixar story artist Adrian Molina created this after-hours animated piece to inform California voters about Proposition 8, a ballot initiative designed to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.

(Thanks, Alex Hirsch)

I couldn’t help and notice a similarity between this music video by Kristofer Strom of Sweden…

…and this signal film for Cartoon Forum 2008 directed by Regina Welker and Max Lang of Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Institute of Animation.

I’m not suggesting that either idea was copied from the other. After all, non-descript blobby creatures straight out of a Pictoplasma book and cavorting in a real-world environment is hardly anything new. Still I thought it might be interesting to show two different animated approaches to a similar problem.

(Thanks, BitterAnimator, for the Cartoon Forum link)

I have no idea what it’s advertising and the idea is not exactly original, but this Diesel online viral titled “SFW—XXX” is silly and entertaining enough to merit a post. The commercial was directed by Keith Schofield of The Viral Factory and the spot’s animation directed by Neil McFarland at Big Animal.

(via Motionographer)

This excellent spot for the Royal Bank of Canada’s Blue Water Project is among those rare pieces of design-oriented animation in which an equal amount of thought is given to the movement of the artwork as to its production design. There’s only one cut in the entire commercial; the scenes flow smoothly into one another in a way that drives home the commercial’s subject matter—water. The spot is directed by Convert for The Ebeling Group and designed by Jon Klassen, who has posted his illustration designs for the commercial on his blog. Klassen also co-directed a fine student film at Sheridan a few years ago called An Eye For Annai.