Web Layout

The television commercial used to be the lifeblood of animation in New York.

That's hardly the case anymore.  There are a handful of outfits that produce commercials with any regularity (we'd like to consider ourselves among them, but it would all depend on the definition of "regularity").  Most of those shops are still diversified into other production outlets.

Web banners represent an untapped production stream for animation facilities.  They may not have the complexity of narrative or animation quality that broadcast offers but banners have their own technical and design hurdles that make them creatively interesting.

One of these hurdles is layout.

In our campaign for Infor with Steve Brodner we had to create several size and scales.  This is standard for banners.

Design also tells the story.  There narrative in layout.  That's part of the challenge of bringing traditional animation and film skills to an interactive media.

Infor Flash Paint

Here are some of the spots we did for Infor through Agency PJA with Steve Brodner.




Most of these are created to be .swf files. The media buy is primarily for targeted websites (like the NY Times, Business Week, Forbes, etc). A major component of the media buy is bandwidth -file size.

These files need to be anywhere from 18k to 32k. Some more complex pieces, like expandables or page take overs have larger sizes.

You can imagine the difficulty of fitting information, art and animation in those small files. A lot of compromises need to be made (mostly in art and animation).

In the above spot, we redraughted and repainted Brodner's artwork in Flash.

Below, we were working strictly under time/budget constraints and animated Brodner's illustration in AfterEffects.

Infor Everywhere, Media That Matters and Monsters!

Friday morning we delivered a package of ads for Infor's China and Japan markets.  Not an hour later the mail came in.

Sure, it's not as good as any of the checks we're expecting but it's nice to Steve Brodner's illustrations for the campaign getting such excellent media placement.

Even more, the agency -PJA in Boston, has put the campaign up for some awards.  One illustration piece shows the Big Erp with his mouth wide open as luggage at an airport carousel roll in.

See it HERE.  It's pretty neat.

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On another topic, our friends at Arts Engine have let us know tickets have gone on sale for the tenth annual Media That Matters festival.

BUY HERE

The evening of short socially conscious films will be held on June 2 at the SVA theater on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues.

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Elliot Cowan posted this video of little drawings he knocked out in three days.

They were made as client giveaways.

133 Watercolours In 3 Days from Elliot Cowan on Vimeo.

Watch Your Step

We've been doing an ad campaign for software Infor for the past several months. "Down with Big ERP"

Our work is mostly online, Steve Brodner's illustrations have run in newspapers, magazines and billboards.

It's an international campaign being spearheaded by Agency PJA in Boston.  We're in the throes of delivery a series for a couple Asian markets now.

Here's a fun interesting component to the campaign.




The concept was developed with Monster Media who also produced the billboard. It's motion activated and the ERP guys follow passersby pockets sucking money with their vacuums.

We provided them with the animation in specific element deliveries. Christina Capozzi Riley did the animation in record time to meet an installation date which coincided with a big conference in Miami.

Another Day

Clearly we're doing something wrong to be so busy, yet so broke.  Next time around, criminal activity (or maybe just politics) will be the way to go.

Thursday we had a shoot for project, yesterday we were the shoot for someone else's project.  A New York based producer for Saudi TV KSA2 did a little profile on the studio.

She was interested in animation's relationship to art -something I can discuss at length, being pithy for a 2:00 profile is another matter.

We did show off some of our work for Infor to demonstrate process.  These are animation drawings (clean ups) by Christina for one of the pieces.