Savor every detail of Orville’s ignominious CG performance in this hi-res version of the spot. It comes courtesy of the Feed blog where lots of people (surprise, surprise) didn’t like the commercial.

Also, in my previous post about this spot, I pointed out the ridiculous bobbing movement in the second-to-last shot. JadeTiger, a user on the CGTalk forums, was so mesmerized by this bit of animation that she created an animated GIF so we can all watch it over and over over….

(The title of this post was penned by ‘frogspasm’ on the CGTalk forums)

Frederator Studios is hosting a party for animators next week at Cinespace in Hollywood. The event is to celebrate the first year of Channel Frederator podcasting and many of the filmmakers will be flying in to attend. All attendees will have the opportunity to get a beautiful 100 page full color program book (full disclosure: I contributed a page to it) which contains dozens of great pieces drawn by the Frederator podcast animators. This event is not an award show (like the Annies), Fred Seibert says it’s “three hours for you to eat, drink, and hang out with the animation community”. Sounds good to me. Wednesday January 24th at 8pm. See you there.(For more details, go here)

1. Chris Meledandri, head of Fox Feature Animation, jumps ship to Universal where he’ll try his best to produce another ICE AGE and not another ROBOTS.

2. What Makes An Animated Pitch Hit? Apparently, teaming with SNL castmembers will do the trick.

3. An animation studio decides NOT to make a talking-animal CG feature?!? What’s the world coming to?

4. Bob Clampett and Ray Harryhausen both attempted to make an adaptation and couldn’t - now Disney and Pixar want to give it a shot. Some are speculating that Andrew Stanton will direct.

This may be the silliest observation ever posted on the Brew, but I was reading the paper today and I couldn’t help staring at this photo of Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki with foreign diplomats in conference. I wondered what those red boxes in front of each board member was. Looking closely, I deduced they were boxes of tissues. How considerate. At home I also have several boxes of Kleenex in the same dark red color, in fact they are Pixar CARS Kleenex. Is it possible Maliki offers Kleenex decorated with Lightning McQueen at his board meetings?What next? Spongebob Whistle Pops for dessert?

Couldn’t make it to Paris for the landmark Disney art exhibit that closed a few days ago? No worries because next month Prestel Publishing is releasing a 360-page English-version exhibition catalog ONCE UPON A TIME WALT DISNEY: THE SOURCES OF INSPIRATION FOR THE DISNEY STUDIOS. Cover price is a steep $75 but it’s only $47.25 at Amazon.

Now that the show has wrapped in France, it’s headed to Canada where it’ll be exhibited from March 8-June 24 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Colin Stewart, a columnist for the OC REGISTER, is asking the question on his blog that many of us are wondering, “Why won’t any galleries in the US make room for this exhibition?”

One more interesting fact about this spot: it was directed at Digital Domain by none other than David Fincher (FIGHT CLUB, SE7EN), who incidentally started his film career in animation (it’s all documented in ANIMATION BLAST 9). The shot towards the end where Orville says, “You’ll like it better…” has some of the funniest (i.e. hideously awful) acting you’ll see in any recent piece of big-budget CG.

A higher-res version of the commercial can be found on the official Redenbacher website. The lip sync is absolutely pathetic. It’s hard to believe this spot was produced by Digital Domain.

The response to this spot has been unanimously negative. Here’s a random sampling of opinions from around the blogosphere:

Y’know, I thought that cannibalizing old footage of Fred Astaire was kind of a tacky idea 11 years ago. But after this, I’m beginning to like the first idea. (via)

While watching Criminal Minds tonight, I saw the most sick and disturbing thing–yes, the commercials featuring a reanimated Orville Redenbacher. If you haven’t seen it, it’s not an old films clip or anything–it’s basically CGI of a man’s corpse dancing around. I’m sorry, but that’s just freaking creepy. (via)

Digital Orville Redenbacher freaks me right out. He is dead. Let’s let him be dead. Because Zombie Orville is just wrong, wrong, wrong. (via)

I just saw the scariest shit ever. A commercial for Orville Redenbacher popcorn in which they used the man himself as a spokesperson. Yes, he’s been dead for some time. They brought him back anyway. So beyond the questionable wisdom of using a dead man as your spokesman, they decided to go totally digital. So now it actually looks like they dug up the old man’s corpse and made it talk and move with marionette strings. The lips don’t even sync with the dialogue! (via)

Earlier Brew coverage of Zombie Redenbacher

UPDATE: Brew reader Tim Curtis says that he expressed his distaste for this commercial by visiting the ConAgra Foods contact page. The toll-free Redenbacher consumer line is 800/243-0303.

I’ve heard back from multiple readers who’ve emailed ConAgra and they’re sending out a form letter to everybody. That letter is below:

Your communication concerning the new Orville Redenbacher TV ads was most welcome, and we appreciate your taking the time to contact us.

We understand that using breakthrough technology in this way can raise some eyebrows. However, we have taken the utmost care to replicate Orville’s endearing personality and likeness. Our most important goal is to respect and advance the legacy of the brand’s founder. The Retro ads which have recently aired received an extremely positive reception from consumers, and with the breakthroughs in technology, we are now able to introduce Orville to a whole new generation!

The Redenbacher family is excited for Orville’s return to our advertising and marketing initiatives. Gary Redenbacher, who represents the Redenbacher family, has fully endorsed our direction and he is excited about ConAgra’s efforts to advance his grandfather’s legacy.

As we design future initiatives, your comments will be carefully considered. We appreciate the time you have taken to contact us and your interest in our products.

Sincerely,

ConAgra Foods Consumer Affairs

Art director (Little Mermaid) and production designer (Jimmy Neutron) Fred Cline has just started a blog. Cline was mentored by Lee and Mary Blair in his younger days, and is researching their careers. We need to get him to post video of the rare commercials he has in his possession. He’s also researching the career of Hugh Harman. And maybe he’ll discuss the project he’s working on at Laika. It’s all at Fred World.

“Jaws of Life” is a freshly styled music video for the Canadian band Wintersleep directed by Sean Wainsteim (with James Mejia). Wainsteim describes the video as, “A surreal urban environment filled with animals struggling with their humanity, bizarre gems, a giant transforming robotic deer on a rampage and much more.” The video was conceptualized by Wintersleep’s lead singer Paul Murphy, fine artist James Mejia and Wainsteim.

I really enjoyed the uninhibited creativity of the piece and wanted to find out more about the production. Here are some notes from Sean about the making of this video from a recent email exchange I had with him:

This was a labour of love. This is video number five (or six) that I’ve done for this band.Took about a month and a half. The grind was mostly late nights for me for a long time, but I worked with a handful of very talented animators and designers who gave up evenings and weekends from their day jobs to lend some time.

Much of the look is derived from the artwork of designer James Mejia whose style of mixing photo cutouts with unique painted techniques was first used in an earlier Wintersleep video Danse Macabre, and expanded for this project.

We shot SLR stills on a nearby rooftop with another musician as the protagonist and then again with myself as the pigeon headed characters. Except for the images on the television screens, all of the characters in the video were shot on a digital SLR still camera. Everything was hand cut out deliberately loose and quick. This was an aesthetic decision…otherwise bluescreen would have been faster and better - but we wanted to see a different background peeking through.

Pretty much only used Adobe After Effects and Photoshop…and wood n’paint and an SLR cam. Many, many hours of handcrafting minute details, both in and out of the computer, were imperative to maintain the warm and highly detailed feel.

CREDITS (partial list)
Music video: Wintersleep “Jaws of Life” (Labwork Music)
Director: Sean Wainsteim (with James Mejia)
Production company: Sean Wainsteim
Staring Glenn Milchem as “The Man”
Painted Backgrounds: James Mejia
Storyboards and post corrections: Steve Wilson
Cinematography: Vinit Borrison (stills), Andrew MacDonald (live-action)
Animation and Visual FX: Nick Fairhead, Joel Tellier, Sean Conly, Arvydas Slabosevicius, Sean Wainsteim
Typography design: Jenny McCracken
Cut-Outs: Clint Lavado, Rachel Vulliens
Funded in part through generous grants from VideoFACT and FACTOR CANADA.