Here’s a neat find. Chuck Howell, curator at The Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland, came across this two-page article from the Oct. 1950 issue of a trade publication called Advertising Agency and Advertising And Selling (I assume two trade organs had merged to come up with that mouthful). “Clipping Board” was a regular feature that focused on art and graphic design trends, covering everything from billboards to direct mail to (as in this case) the still-new
medium of television (click on thumbnails below for enlargements). These pages detail the creation of a TV commercial, for Sealtest ice cream, produced at Tempo Productions and directed by Bill Tytla (the article mis-spells his name “Wm. Tytle”).

Some of the most influential and popular TV commercials of the 1950s were the Bert and Harry Piels Beer spots created by UPA (and later on animated by Terrytoons). Much of their popularity was due to the great dialogue tracks provided by Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding (aka Bob and Ray) and the appealing animation directed by Gene Deitch. If you’ve been wondering where you could see these, Asifa-Hollywood has just posted a whole slew of the early ones on their Animation Archive blog. Go there now!

I like the simplicity of these two new line-animation spots for the Detroit Institute of the Arts, which were made to help increase attendance at the museum. The animation is hand-drawn and composited in After Effects. They were directed by Julian Grey of Toronto’s Head Gear Animation. Check out both ads below:

CREDITS
Title: “Son of Hatman” and “Thinker”
Client: Detroit Institute of Arts
Creative Agency: Perich Advertising + Design, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Director: Julian Grey
Production Company: Head Gear Animation, Toronto
Producer: Kathryn Rawson
Animators: Sean Branigan, Julian Grey
Compositor: Nick Fairhead

I love this new channel ident for BBC2 directed by Guilherme Marcondes (of Tyger fame). I also love the behind-the-scenes photos that Guilherme posted on his Flickr. He writes about the spot:

This spot was one in a series of six (each directed by a different person) promoting some of the hosts of the most popular shows on BBC2. Bruce Parry presents some wild reality shows in the channel, like “Tribe” and “Amazon”. My job was too create a visual interpretation of Bruce’s own concerns about environment and life in a materialistic society.

We built the “ultimate exploitation machine”, powered by human beings, ravaging the land, sucking nature on one side and spitting consumer goods on the other. We placed the scene inside a mirror box to create a sense of boundlessness to the destructive process imposed by the machine.

Animation credits are:
Direction: Guilherme Marcondes
Production designers: Ryan Heck and Andy Byers
Design: Guilherme Marcondes and Douglas Alves
Animation and Compositing: Guilherme Marcondes
Additional Compositing: John Harrison

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.