

Feature Creatures *66 30 sec movie - 160x120 -
star66.avi - [2.8Mb]



- These are two still frames from a trio of TV ads I
created for Ad Vantage Productions. Our client was
Bristol Communications, and in turn, their client was
Newfoundland Telephone. It took less than two weeks to
put together two of these 30 second ads, and another week
and a bit to put together the third, which came along
several months later. From the second they said
"GO!" it was two weeks until the first two
spots hit the airwaves. Created on an Amiga 3000 (with an
040 accelerator) and Rendered on two Amigas, with
Lightwave 3.0, this was an amazing feat! So of course I
used every shortcut in the book including repetitive
motions, and short motion segments framed by stills. The
nature of the ads allowed us to re-use a lot of the
rendering, which made this whole series possible.
- I first had to bring to life a character called the
Feature Creature, who would introduce Newfoundland
Telephone and New Brunswick Telephone's new *66 and
*69 features. The only image I had to work with was one
artist's sketch from their brochure. From that flat
cartoon I created these little guys.
- Then my job was to make them jump around on the screen
telling users about the features. In one ad, I do a split
screen with some live footage of a shower-head spraying
water, but the other two are 100% computer animated.
These ads got a great response, and there's talk of
making T-shirts and other merchandise based on these
critters. I got a fair amount of recognition for doing
these ads.
- The Feature Creatures - *69 ad was chosen as a
finalist in the First Annual Wavey Awards
sponsored by Newtek
and Avid Media Group, in the category of Best Use of
Lightwave in a TV Commercial. The drawing was August
9, 1995 but alas, the ad did not win. But to be chosen as
one of four finalists was quite an honour. Newtek sent me a Lightwave hat. Thanks,
guys!
- These ads were also used by New Brunswick Telephone, and
were identical, apart from the end logo, and the price of
the features. So by using only a few replacement scenes,
we were able to re-use the whole series of ads.
- The .AVI file shows the *66 ad. It's also the New Brunswick Telephone version.
The two ads are very similar, so you'll get a very good idea what made the
judges choose this ad as a finalist. The .AVI file contains some artifacting
due to the compression method, and the fact that it was transferred from video.







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Sean Huxter.
 
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