Author: Bob Feb 01, 2018 3 min read
Let me tell you a little story about how one short motion story won the hearts and minds of a large audience of video fans.
It all was started with the invite from the Australian company ‘MBS’. These cool guys needed to promote a new product – Pocket Spray that removes the smell of smoke from the user’s clothes and skin as well as any area it is sprayed onto.
But the thing is that smoking-related advertising laws are very strict in Australia and there are no possibilities to show such a product in a usual advertising way.
‘’So how we can help with that though?’’ – we thought.
Our creative department gathered to think things through. We brainstormed and figured out how we can make a promo that will allow the Australian audience to relate to the product as well as to convey actual information about what exactly the product does.
What could be better than to show such an idea in cartoonish style? On the one hand, such a style looks ‘softer’ and people do not associate it with something forbidden in the unconscious.
On the other hand, nowadays flat 2D animation is widespread throughout the universe of animation and it is the popular technique for most markets. You know, 2D animation styles are pretty different, and one of them is Rotoscoping. We stopped by this technique because its natural and organically drawn art that will always be represented more effectively and beautifully. Why?
1. Rotoscoping is usually used as a technique for blending (compositing) cartoon characters with realistic perspectives in television commercials.
2. This style will never get old. And we don’t go down the track of what’s popular.
3. It looks more textural and expressiveness because this is a hand-drawn trace over each frame of a live-action movie.
4. This technique reproduces realistic movements and expressions.
5. It will look wow anyway.
Firstly, we filmed the actions that needed to animate. This was our tall blue-eyed actor who was followed and imprisoned by smoke, but a perfume bottle with a special spray released him from these sharp smoke bars.
Then we started tracing this movie. Each artist concentrates on one part at a time in order to keep a consistency within the different drawings. And once the animation was sketched, we turned off the live-action clip layer and went over the drawn to fix little details.
After revisions and numbers of changes, we were ready to paint the animation. We created a relevant color palette (with many colors from our live-action movie, of course) and painted everything in specific colors as well as with the rational light.
The created sequences are processed and have to be rendered for final production. One 10-second scene took an hour to convert it into a final clean and crisp result.
The full version you can see here:
And I have to say, we got a huge satisfaction making such a cool project! Not to mention our happy clients and audience.
