Category: Commercials

Marketing and communication company Pittard Sullivan (Culver City, CA)engaged SIMEX (Santa Monica, CA) to help create a new full-motion, computeranimated logo to accompany all of King World's programs. The animated logofeatures a star burst animated in Alias|Wavefront PowerAnimator. FromPittard Sullivan, Reid Thompson directed, and Jim Capp and Debra Kaufmanproduced. Nick Bates was the visual effects supervisor and George Mendozawas the executive producer at SimEx Digital Studios.

THE INK TANK has produced "Hockey Monkey," a mixed-media music video forNickelodeon's KA-BLAM!, which will air this spring. The 1-minute, 30-secondpiece follows a group of live-action adults who are in search of a monkey.Unbeknownst to them, the animated monkey is in an ice hockey match with agroup of cut-out animated kids. For The Ink Tank, R.O. Blechman wascreative director; Brian O'Connell, executive producer/co-director; JesseGordon, live-action director/cameraman; Maciek Albrecht, cut-out

Hollywood-based CLASS-KEY CHEW-PO COMMERCIALS, in conjunction with Ogilvy & Mather, has created the newest Cocoa Pebbles cereal spot starring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. The 30-second commercial, directed by Raul Garcia, features a traditionally-drawn Fred and Barney placed in a computer-generated 3D video game environment, and eventually jumping into a live-action setting. The video game environment and other characters were created in Maya NT software. The 2D and 3D live action were combined using both Flame and Toon Boom software.

Chicago, Illinois-based TRICKY PICTURES has produced a 20-second main title animation sequence for Nickelodeon's I AM POEM series. In addition, Belgian director and animator Dirk van de Vondel, represented by Tricky Pictures, was selected from more than 200 candidates to create a visual adaptation of "I Used To Be," one of the 15 poems in the series. Produced by Nickelodeon's Creative Lab to serve as interstitial programming, I AM POEM is a new series of short-form films based on original kids' poetry.

New York-based SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION created a 10-second animated logo for design company Number 17 New York, which will be shown at the head of all future SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (SNL) theatrical releases. It will debut later this year with the release of SUPERSTAR which features the neurotic Catholic schoolgirl Mary Catherine Gallagher, who is portrayed by Molly Shannon on NBC's long-running sketch comedy series. The opening is a dreamy and abstract representation of nightime in New York City with lights of different speeds, scales and densities resolving through to the SNL Studios Logo.

Helium Productions has produced a complete graphics package for Fox Network in collaboration with design company Big Media Group. Helium produced 19 minutes of 3D animation which is shown in IDs for "Just One Fox," menu beds and on-air promo material including opens, closes and backgrounds for all talent IDs.

Blue Sky | VIFX's Jan Carlée directed and designed a cinematic bug's-eye-view of the natural world for a series of three 30-second computer animated spots for Nature's Resource herbal products: "Echinacea," "Ginko Balboa" and "St. John Wort." All three ads, which feature a ladybug searching out the choicest flowers and herbal ingredients, "bring the camera down to the ladybug's level and stage the scenes so that we see the world from her point of view," explains Carlée.

Atlanta-based Crawford Communications designed and produced a 45-second computer animated identification sequence for Odyssey Productions, producers of the popular Minds Eye video series now distributed by Sony Music Video. The sequence was designed by Robert Taylor of Crawford Digital and Jason Ett of DESIGNefx with an original soundtrack by Randy Garmon and Reid Hall of m&e (music & effects). Created in Alias|Wavefront Maya and composited in Flame, the spot is a visual representation of The Minds Eye concept.

San Francisco-based The Attik has produced and designed 5 seconds of live-action and graphics for the theatrical trailer end card for "Idle Hands," an upcoming Columbia Pictures film. The segment involves a live-action human hand clutching and clawing at the screen. The Attik team blended the live-action with an illustrated graphic of a hand, animated using a technique similar to stop-motion, to give the piece an organic feel while maintaining a scratchy, hand-crafted texture. Simon Dixon was the Creative Director/Director and Monica Perez was Senior Art Director.

San Francisco-based (Colossal) Pictures created a new animated Nickelodeon theatrical open, which premiered with Paramounts The Rugrats Movie, and stars Slap D. Pooch, a blue-balloon-nosed dog who was featured in his own short film as part of Nickelodeons Oh Yeah! Cartoons! series. The 16-second open, Slaps Fleck, was directed by Colossals Charlie Canfield, creative directed by George Evelyn, and animated by Chuck Gammage Animation based on a character created by Bill Burnett and designed by Vincent Waller.