Black Logic was worked into the mix for a new musical two-spot campaign for Twix. In "Remote Control," two skateboarders flip channels on the TV moving from teen pop band Dream to polka performers then finally to rapper Lil' Bow Wow. The backgrounds are elaborately animated scenes of caramel, chocolate and cookie. "Our task was to integrate live-action and tabletop footage with our CG elements into a seamless world," said lead visual effects artist Patrick Ferguson.

Wild Brain has finished spots for Jolly Rancher’s new gel snack product, "Fruitensity." The 15 and 30-second ads were directed by Wild Brain’s Julia Tortolani and conceptualized by ad agency Euro RSCG Tatham. "Fruitensity" features bold colors and a combination of live-action and photo-collage. Tortolani’s collage art animation was created using a mix of still photography, full-motion film and a broad array of digital tools including Maya, Photoshop and After Effects.

Ring of Fire teamed with entertainment branding company 3 Ring Circus to create the new ID package for the on-air and online network, TechTV. The visually striking package includes a series of four 30-second spots that display technology as a lifestyle benefit. "Connect," "Communicate," "Convenience" and "Community" are fast-paced spots, comprised of a primary red, white, blue and black color palette. "The TechTV project was particularly challenging because of the visual interpretation of 'Connectivity,'" states Elaine Cantwell, head of creative services for 3 Ring Circus.

iXL Digital Video has wrapped on a new spot for Tiger Electronic's robot dog, I-Cybie. In the 30-second commercial, i-Cybie appears before a futuristic backdrop of swirling colors, and as the camera rotates, the robot performs tricks. "The titles had to look flashy but not appear too frenetic, nor could they distract from i-Cybie," explains Doug Dimon, senior visual effects artist at iXL Digital Video Group. "I decided to use a short blast with a slow fade technique, throwing titles up very quickly with laser-like effect, then letting them drift away.

Black Logic scratched and won for its new 30-second spot for the New York Lottery. In the spot, scratching an old jalopy turns it into a new sports car, a dribbling sprinkler becomes an ornate fountain, a small abode turns into a giant palace and a loveable dog gets instantly groomed. "The spot presented a double challenge, since two environments had to register accurately and yet be noticeably different so we could see the changes through the scratching," said director Michel Suissa.

Bugshop, a New York motion graphics and effects shop, has completed four spots for the Animal Planet imaging campaign, "Life is Better with Animals." Ross Shain, creative director at Bugshop, served as visual effect supervisor, compositor and designer. He completed seven composite shots and designed the endtags, which involved compositing exotic animals such as a mountain ram, mandrill and alligator on green screen to hide then reveal the Animal Planet logo and tagline stamped into the background.

Motion Theory designed, animated and finished three 30-second TV spots for Suzuki motorcycles, ATVs and street bikes. Creative director Mathew Cullen described the style of the spots as reminiscent of "vintage boxing posters." In the commercials, the use of animated stills of the vehicles make posters seem like they come to life. Once the footage was color timed the final compositing and onlining was done by Motion Theory.

PDI/DreamWorks has completed production on three new commercials for Monster.com, MSN and Target. PDI/DreamWorks brought Monster.com's green mascot, Trump, to life, working with renowned advertising agency Arnold Communications and live-action director Kinka Usher, on the humor spots which debuted during the Super Bowl. The PDI/DreamWorks team, led by director Larry Bafia, created the monster spokesperson for all five spots' endtags.

Black Logic has wrapped on a new five spot campaign for the Nasdaq Stock Exchange: "Qualcomm" uses the modem port on a laptop computer as the entrance to a visual world of digital communications; "Immunex" uses transparent CG human forms and brightly colored double helixes to introduce the world of advanced immunology; "Amazon" portrays that company's familiar Website interface to show how it created online commerce; "Biogen" opens with a group photo of the scientists who broke the human genetic code; and "Yahoo" develops the company's groundbreaking search engines, as a road map through a maz

The Discovery Channel Networks enlisted the talents of ViewPoint Studios to develop a promotional package for their Wings and Civilization Channels. ViewPoint filmed the live-action footage of a mock air battle on location in Laage, Germany. Avid editorial transformed the footage into dramatic sequences and then turned it over to the design and Flame teams. The main title and supporting text elements were developed along with further enhancements of color treatments and lighting effects.

Cuppa Coffee has created four spots for Lifetime Television’s Valentine’s contest "Romanced Across America Sweepstakes." Incorporating stop-motion animation and digital compositing, co-directors Warren Brown and Hector Herrera designed four different "panels" to illustrate the journey that Lifetime is sending their lucky winners on. These panels for Santa Fe, Vermont, Florida and Washington are comprised of photographs, moving illustrations and stop-motion props that were shot under camera and then digitally collaged into frame.

Rhinoceros Visual Effects & Design has brightened up six 15-second spots introducing Colgate Total Whitening toothpaste. "Hearts" shows a toothpaste tube floating in a red space until heart-shaped balloons peel away from the background and float skyward revealing the new package in a stunning white environment. "Brightness" opens with the tube on the same red background, when a brightness adjustment bar pops up, goes haywire and turns the background again to white. These first two spots launched in the beginning of February with the others set to roll out in the upcoming months.

Spontaneous Combustion helped bite off the heads of Pepperidge Farms' Goldfish for a new ad campaign. Filmed by New York-based Chelsea Pictures, the campaign consists of one 30-second, a 20-second with a 10-second endtag, and a 15-second ad. The spot begins with CG goldfish swimming and diving through a page of sheet music. As the fish start to swim throughout the room, live-action footage of kids and mothers munching on goldfish fill the scene.

With Chuck Gammage Animation handling the traditional animation and TOPIX/Mad Dog taking on the 3D, a new spot for Kellogg's Island Adventure campaign in the U.K. has Uder the Cow bringing excitement to breakfast. The spot introduces Kellogg's new Corn Flakes Cereal and Chocolate Milk Bars. In the 2D spot, Uder armed with a chocolate milk gun takes aim at boxes of Corn Flakes falling from the sky, turning them into Corn Flakes Cereal and Chocolate Milk Bars. Director Chuck Gammage oversaw the production of the entire spot.

ILM created the new Super Bowl spot for Budweiser that has aliens saying, "Whassup!" The spot opens with a dog walking into a country field and is then beamed up into an alien spacecraft. After the head alien asks the dog what he has learned on Earth, the dog unzips and out pops an alien who yells, "Whassup!" The animation was done using Softimage with facial and lip-synchs done with ILM's in-house software Caricature. Modeling was done in Maya and Alias|Wavefront, with rendering handled in RenderMan and compositing in ILM's in-house software CompTime.

SimEx Digital Studios has wrapped on a new Kellogg's Froot Loop spot, which launches Toucan Sam and his mischievous nephews into space. SimEx provided 2D and 3D animation, compositing, editing, as well as live-action shots for the 30-second commercial. "Rocket" has Toucan Sam and his three nephews propelling themselves into space in a primitive looking rocket. Shane Zalvin, Roberto Casale and Holger Leihe created the cel animation, with help from cel assistant directors Charlotte DeBlock and Ingin Kim. Digital ink and paint was completed at SimEx using the Toonz system.

In celebration of Valentine's Day, Wild Brain has created a new spot for Hershey's, which has the famous Kisses candies blushing. Directed by Carl Willat, the commercial features two silver wrapped Hershey's Kisses as one kisses the other, its wrapper turns red and their tags embrace. The spot was animated in Softimage and rendered in Mental Ray with compositing done in Henry.

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Courtesy of J.J. Sedelmaier Productions

Miss Jones, a design and visual effects commercial company, has created an animated spider for AT&T's new media campaign. In the commercial, a spider weaves a web, which represents the AT&T logo. This spot continues in the same vein as other AT&T spots, "Pop," "Newton" and "Balloon," completed by Miss Jones. Miss Jones' spot director Barnaby Jackson said, "With the other spots we start with the [AT&T] logo, and then transformed it. Here, we recreated the logo. We really let the spider have artistic license.

Image Courtesy of iXL Digital Video Group