5 Comments »   posted in Advertising, CGI

Tweet Share on Tumblr

Even though Motionographer posted this advertisement for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, I felt it was important to post it again on Cartoon Brew. Not because it’s visually impressive (it is), but because of the technique it “borrowed” for its production.

The creators of the spot—director Elliot Jokelson and NY-based studio Ghost Robot—credit recent Pratt grad Javan Ivey for coming up with the Stratastencil technique upon which they’ve based their entire piece. When Javan posted his short “My Paper Mind” on his website last year, he also posted technical notes on how he achieved the look. (We mentioned Ivey’s work in last month’s piece about 3D papercraft animation.)

The ethical question here is, If an artist comes up with an original technique and style and a studio decides to use it shortly after the artist puts his work online, should the original artist be offered a job, financial compensation, or creative credit on the project?

Let me make one thing clear: techniques can’t be hidden away; they need to be pushed around, explored, discovered. Computer animation would not exist today if not for the early SIGGRAPH conferences where artists and technicians openly shared their discoveries. There’s a big difference here though in that Ghost Robot and Ivey were not working collaboratively and contributing to each other’s artistic development. Ghost Robot took another artist’s fleshed-out technique and got hired by a client to replicate that look. Examine Ivey’s original piece and the Bonnaroo spot and you’ll see that they not only borrowed the technique, they brazenly took actual animation ideas from Ivey’s piece. In my opinion, if you’re a studio that’s taking money on the basis of another individual’s brand-new technique, it’s shamelessly low not to make an effort to have the originator direct the piece.

In the comments of the Motionographer post, Ivey notes that he was emailed by the director but he didn’t respond to their initial inquiry. Ghost Robot’s single email to Javan does not, in my mind, constitute a sincere effort to communicate with him, and since the director was emailing him, it was clear that they weren’t looking to have Ivey direct. They’d already sold the job based on Ivey’s technique and, more than likely, they wanted to make their own jobs easier by having the originator show them the way.

In my opinion, this is what it boils down to: how creatively bankrupt does a commercial studio have to be to troll the Internet looking for the ideas of college students to rip off? Is there nobody at Ghost Robot who possesses an ounce of creativity so that they don’t have to pitch the ideas of college students to clients? Sadly this situation is considered business as usual in the icky world of advertising where studios regularly repurpose ideas, technique and styles. And just as I feel it’s important to point out the creative people in this business, I also feel it’s important to point out the Jokelsons and Ghost Robots who coast off the creativity of others.

At the end of the day, Javan lost money and work because of this, but he’s gained credibility within the animation community by having the validity of his animation technique proven by an uncreative commercial studio supported by deep-pocketed clients. It should be pointed out that despite being taken advantage of, Ivey has been a class-act about the situation and tells Motionographer:

“This is precisely what I mean every time I say ‘I’d like to see someone try.’ Because I do, I love to see what someone else does with it. They’ve taken the idea and applied manpower and a budget to it, and I’m absolutely floored. It looks great. I mean, I’m kinda bummed I wasn’t invited to the party, but I really enjoy seeing what they’ve done.”

32 Comments »   posted in Advertising, Ideas/Commentary, Papercraft

Tweet Share on Tumblr

Zodiac Race by PandaPanther

February 3, 2009 11:11 pm

NY animation studio PandaPanther, whose work I quite enjoy, completed a quirky three-minute short called Zodiac Race for the Onitsuka Tiger line of Japanese shoe company Asics. It celebrates the company’s 60th anniversary with the re-telling of the Zodiac Race Legend. A director’s cut of the film can be seen on the PandaPanther website along with a ‘making of’ video that gives a sense of how they combined miniature backgrounds with the CG characters.

Here is more about the project from PandaPanther:

We were approached by Amsterdam Worldwide, previously known as Strawberry frog to produce a short film, along with an in-store display of an actual 1 Meter Diorama Sneaker which is currently showing in Amsterdam. The actual shoe was used in parts of the film as a backdrop and environment and functions in real life as a miniature race track with moving parts. We were given tons of creative freedom with the characters and environments, and also worked together with a great creative team at Amsterdam Worldwide to expand their script into a full epic. Because the film is for an online campaign, we were not restricted by a set time length and thus the film expanded to 3 minutes in order to give each character some screentime and to hit on all the key moments in the story. A big challenge was to make sure everyone involved felt their Zodiac Sign was represented in some way. We really enjoyed this project, it felt like it perfectly suited us, and we got the opportunity to use many of our techniques, combining miniatures, CG and cel animation.

4 Comments »   posted in Advertising, CGI, Shorts

Tweet Share on Tumblr

Hunger Like the Wolf by Eun-Ha Paek

January 31, 2009 8:29 pm

Toby Barlow, author of the book Sharp Teeth, let me know about a beautiful viral created by Eun-Ha Paek to promote his book. There are more animated pieces related to the book at SharpTeethTheBook.com. I love seeing such an ambitious use of animation to promote a print novel; hopefully more animators and novelists will explore these possibilities together.

3 Comments »   posted in Advertising

Tweet Share on Tumblr

Ruff And Reddy Pitch Picture Tubes

January 29, 2009 12:05 am

Yesterday I appeared on Stu Shostack’s internet radio show. While waiting for our broadcast to begin, I was rummaging through several copies of Stu’s collection of vintage TV Guide back issues. In one 1960 edition, I found two cartoon items of interest. The first was this full page ad for Sylvania television picture tubes featuring radio and TV personality Arthur Godfrey interacting with Hanna Barbera TV stars Ruff and Reddy.

I love it when cartoon stars were used to sell products to adults. This was the same year The Flintstones were sponsored by Winston cigarettes and Mr. Magoo was hawking Stag Beer. And what a great sketch of the characters! An very appealing pose of Ruff — and check out the attitude on Reddy.

As for the second animation item I found in that TV Guide — check back tomorrow.

8 Comments »   posted in Advertising, TV

Tweet Share on Tumblr

“Bubblicious” and “Unboxed”

January 16, 2009 3:30 pm

Following up on the piece about the 3D papercraft/cut-out trend, here are two new works that are more-or-less from that school of thought.

I’ve received three emails about this first project in the past day so I figure it’s what all the young kids are talking about this week. It’s a music video for the song “Bubblicious” by music producer Jake Williams, aka Rex the Dog. It was directed by Geoffroy de Crecy at Partizan Lab. The DIY stop-mo aesthetic is fun to watch, but it began to feel repetitive once I realized that that was the video’s entire gimmick and it wasn’t building towards anything more substantial. It’s a great ‘making-of’ video; it’s too bad they weren’t actually making anything.

More successful as a finished piece—yet flawed in an entirely different way—is “Unboxed”, a stop-motion and traditional hand-drawn commercial for Audi co-directed by Aaron Duffy at 1st Ave Machine and Russell Brooke of Passion Pictures. There’s an interview with Aaron Duffy about the commerical at Motionographer. I like the piece, but it’s uncomfortably derivative of cartoonist Saul Steinberg, both conceptually and design-wise. It would have been a classier move if they’d been straight up and acknowledged they were using Steinberg’s work as inspiration instead of pretending like they have no idea who he is and saying in their interview that they “did dozens of designs” for the ad agency. I’m sure they did dozens of character designs, but I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the character is handled in such a Steinberg-esque manner.

22 Comments »   posted in Advertising, Music Videos, Stop Motion, Papercraft, Passion Pictures

Tweet Share on Tumblr

Betty Boop Lottery Tix

December 30, 2008 7:30 am

Looks like Betty Boop has returned to her pre-Code roots… gambling!

Dave Filipi (Film Curator of Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio) found these Lottery Tickets (above) while visiting his family in Minnesota over Christmas (Alas, no winners).

An iconic symbol during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Betty’s been used for Lottery promotions before in various states (New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for example). Contestants for the current holiday themed contests in Minnesota must scratch off Pudgy to see if they win. Sounds like a good idea to me.

3 Comments »   posted in Advertising, Classic

Tweet Share on Tumblr

R.I.P. WB Cartoon Mural

December 29, 2008 12:05 am

Here’s a sure sign of the apocalypse — or at least the end of a local cartoon landmark. Warner Bros. has quietly removed its huge Looney Tunes/Hanna-Barbera/Warner Animation mural (above) during Christmas week. Bugs Bunny and company have adorned the Burbank studio at Olive and Pass Avenues for over 15 years.

I was driving past the studio yesterday when I noticed (and snapped the photo below) the mural was gone. To give them benefit of the doubt, perhaps they are going to replace it with an even better graphic of Bugs Bunny and crew. I hope so… but who wants to bet that Harry Potter or the live action Dark Knight will soon be guiding us toward the Cahuenga Pass.

37 Comments »   posted in Advertising

Tweet Share on Tumblr

• Page 18 of 32
• <
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24
• 25
• 26
• 27
• 28
• 29
• 30
• 31
• 32
• >