Wednesday, September 2, 2009

IN A CAN!

The big news of the D-Corporation acquiring Marvel reminded me of the first thing I ever did in animation.

I sent out an invoice for the "new" and "non-new" versions of an X-Men Pasta commercial. This would have been February 1995.

Brian produced the job at The Ink Tank. Igor Mitrovic did the animation. Amongst the production crew was Marina Dominis who, incidentally, has been working with us for several months on an upcoming project for PBS. Chef Boyardee was the client, Young & Rubicam the advertising agency.


Oh, and David Mazzuchelli did the layouts.

It was shot on film. You can see in the scene where the guy (I'm told he's Magneto -even though he doesn't look a thing like Sir Ian McKellen) how he shakes off register and the cels flare towards the bottom. I'll also note that "In a can!" is supposed to be the narrator. That never made any sense to me.

Brian tells me that the character models were a bit of an issue.

They would draw up the layouts and the Marvel Comics people would complain that they were off model. The production team would counter with a dozen tear sheets from comics only to be told -"Don't use that one!" Eventually they were given a "model book" containing a few dozen pages of characters that looked different in every pose.

That's one of the things people love about Marvel Comics -the artist's hand is always present.

After this spot, The Ink Tank was contracted for a "Street Sharks" commercial. JAWSOME! These were ugly, stupid things. I can't wait for the Miley Cyrus crossover.


The third was supposed to be a Spiderman pasta commercial. This would have been around 1997 probably, as I was closer to production. The bid went to now-defunct Magnet Pictures. Most of the crew who worked on the spots at The Ink Tank (with the exception of Sara Calagero) moved over there to work on it.

2 comments:

Liesje said...

Yeah, I don't know who your source is, but is not Magneto. That's Mr. Sinister, although he doesn't have all the lines that wrap horizontally around his body... I'm assuming those were omitted for Igor's sake.

roconnor said...

Brian says, "We just drew what they told us to draw."