Happy Hour Entertainment Papers Simon Mall
Portland, Oregon's Happy Hour Entertainment recently completed CG work on a campaign of regional television commercials for Indianapolis-based shopping center Simon Mall. Teamed with advertising agency Publicis Mid-America, Happy Hour produced four 15-second spots to complement Simons current print campaign. Each spot begins with a paper gift certificate which then folds and transforms itself into a shirt, purse, nutcracker and rocking horse. The challenge throughout the animation process was to maintain the photo-real quality of the gift certificate in order to match the clean and simple design of Simon Malls current print campaign. "The concept for the spots was very lyrical and sound driven," said Tracy Prescott-MacGregor, Happy Hours creative director on the project. "Since the spots had no dialogue, we used animation to enhance that tempo and really propel the story line." Happy Hours team used Lightwave to model and surface the characters. Shadow Designer was used to match the lighting to that of the print campaign and to give additional depth to the CG sets. Happy Hour credits include executive producer Erik Vignau, creative director Steve Bailey, director Tracy Prescott Macgregor, lead artist Jake Carvey, technical director Richard Foster and animator Tom Sorem. Sound design provided by Jamie Haggerty of Stray Voltage.