Mr Scruff Honeydew

An animated music video for the Mr. Scruff song Honeydew. Everything to do with Mr. Scruff, from his album artwork to his website to his music videos, has the same visual style, which really gives him a strong aesthetic identity. As soon as you see one of the little, flat potato people drawings you instantly know its something Scruff related. Its almost like a kind of branding. I think for an artist like Mr. Scruff working in electronic music, this is particularly useful, as it's a lot harder to create an identity being one man behind some decks than it is for a more traditional band. And image counts for a lot now, doesn't it?

Its a nice little video, nothing too complicated going on, and it flows along nicely with laid back feel of the song. The layering and scaling, combined with the use of shadows, gives a real sense of depth and perspective to graphics that individually couldn't look any flatter. The simple graphics, even though they're just basic shapes with the bare minimum of detail, have a real charm to them.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

What Goes Up Must Come Down is a music video for a song by North of Ping Pong directed by Adam Smith. It seems more like a short film than a music vid, clocking in at just under 7 minutes without the credits. I really can't imagine the song working without the video, inspite of the catchiness of the chorus I can't picture hearing it on the radio or seeing it live, it seems too tied in with the visuals. The narrative is interwoven with the visuals beautifully, and it makes for a very entertaining watch. Also, nice bit of acting from Charlie Creed-Mills, who plays all three of the passengers!

Ad 4: Adidas Skate Commercial

Another advertisment for skate shoes, but a complete contrast from the previous DVS ad, which was all based around the post production. This ad is based around one continuous camera shot, some well planned choreography and the consistent abilities of the skaters. It doesn't even use any music, just the natural sounds of people skating. Again this advert doesn't directly present a specific product to you, but there does seem to be an attempt to draw the viewers eye to the skaters shoes through the choice of having them wear brightly coloured models such as red and turquoise, which stand out especially against the fairly washed out colours of the environment. Like a lot of advertising, the fame and popularity of individuals is harnessed to sell the product. In the DVS advert it was soley focused on one of the companies sponsored professional skaters. Here they have several members of their professional team all featuring in the same commercial, broadening its appeal. Its an effective advert, its original, and it focuses on two of the best elements of skateboarding: cruising through the streets and skating with your friends, which gives it a relatable appeal. I've got a lot of respect for the patience it must have taken to put this together, becuase no matter how well planned and timed everything is, it only takes one little error on the cameraman or one of the skaters parts to send it all back to the beginning. Nicely cordinated, nicely executed, the camera manages to keep on top of the action and get in position well with the varying speeds of everyone involved.

Ad 3: DVS Shoes 'Echo' Commercials

Next up, an advert by DVS skate shoes. Love these ads, there are a few in the series, but this one is my favourite for a couple of reasons. The effect of having the same person carrying out the same movements repeatedly, on screen multiple times in the same shot is created using rotoscoping in After Effects, creating a mask around the skater and then layering him several times over the background with staggered starting points. The first trick in this advert is particularly impressive, as having things moving in the background, in this case the cars, makes it a lot harder to do the masking. The second trick on the handrail is actually three different tricks, making it even more impressive visually. The shot crabs left to right on this, and to have the three different tricks while having the camera moving would've involved using motion control to precisely control the camera movements, which I don't think was the case here, i think they simply moved the finished footage slowly left to right in post production to create the effect of the camera moving. It's an effective advert, although there's no emphasis placed on the products sold by DVS (skate shoes), this is usually the case with video adverts in skateboarding, the print adverts generally being the place specific products are featured more strongly. Video adverts tend to try to portray a high standard of skateboarding but in a different and more interesting visual format than it is presented in a standard skateboard film. As someone who'd be in the target audience for this advert I can say it's effective. Most people interested in skateboarding are usually into watching/filming skating, so anything new and different will create discussion, and more than likely will have people starting to try to emulate the effects themselves in their own work.

Ad 2: Carphone Warehouse 'A Brief History of Communication'

The next advert I'm going to look at is A Brief History of Communication made by Kristofer Strom for the Carphone Warehouse. It's another animated advert, but done in a completely different style to the Audi advert. It's a stop motion animation made by drawing and erasing on a white board, with some compositing done in after effects. It's massively impressive that its all hand drawn on a whiteboard, I really wouldn't have thought so from a casual viewing, and I'm starting to realise a lot of things are made differently to how I first imagine them to have been created.

Ad 1: Audi 'Unboxed' commercial

The first of four advertisments I'm going to look at is a recent commercial for the Audi Q5, created and directed by Aaron Duffy and Russell Brooke. I'm going to start off by saying that I think advertising is evil. However there's a lot of creative work going on in advertising, and it often produces some very nice results. Also, having stated that I'm really not into 3d animation, I'm going to have to take some of that back, as I really like this advert and a lot of it is 3d work. It was created in XSI and Nuke, with the 2d cel animation of the character UV mapped onto the 3d animation. The creators made lots of actual cardboard models and did stop motion tests to make sure they accurately recreated the look of the cardboard and how it moves. Very nicely done and entertaining to watch, but as with nearly all advertising I can't say that it makes you want to buy the product being promoted.

Procrastination

Another animation I've been really into for a while is Procrastination, and while just looking it up to write about it I've discovered that its written, animated and directed by Johnny Kelly, the same guy that wrote/directed the animation I've just previously written about! I guess that makes me a fan of his then. This is such a great piece of animation, using a lot of different styles and techniques. I've got to say that probably my favourite thing to see in peoples work is a combination of different styles and media. Naturally it helps that this animation is funny, and something I can totally relate to being something of a master of procrastination myself.

The Seed

Other than video, my main area of interest has been animation, mainly stop motion and various methods of 2d animation (I'm really not best keen on 3d animations, but I'll go into that some other time). This is a beautiful little animation I came across recently, called The Seed. Its a mixture of flash and stop motion animation, set to a lovely piece of music by Jape. It was written and directed by Johnny Kelly, but its pretty staggering to see the ammount of people that were actually involved in the creation of such a short piece. I think all told there were 16 people credited with helping in the production of the animation. There's a nice little video of the creation of the animation on vimeo as well, showing the creation of the stop motion models from cardboard and how the stop motion parts were planned out in flash. All in all its a very nice piece, simply and cleanly executed, and the combination of the flat flash parts of the animation with the cardboard models add a nice extra dimension.


The Seed from mike geiger on Vimeo.