DIY Production…

Every once in a while I will decide to take on a home project that, on the surface, appears to be seemingly easy yet, after 3 trips to Home Depot and an empty wallet, I still haven’t completed the fix in question and I am not sure whether the work I have done is even up to snuff.
Production is a little like house work. If you are a Do It Yourself type of person you might be able to do a certain amount of design or production work on your own but, you should be prepared if the eventual outcome takes considerably longer than what you planned on or it doesn’t look like what you see on the internet or TV.
With the cost to enter production being so low, many clients have gone the DIY direction setting up well outfitted in-house production departments. For the cost of nice sedan in the US, you can build a small production company that can handle animation, minimal amounts of live action and post production. Weigh that with the cost of going to an outside producer and you can see why the DIY mentality stretches beyond home repairs and into the advertising and marketing world. The downside to the availability of hardware and software is that business owners still have to find someone to make things work. More often than not, business owners who choose to bring their advertising, marketing, and production in house either tap into an existing employee or they hire a person with minimal experience.
I can’t begrudge companies for wanting to have people on staff with the right equipment to produce marketing, promotional, and even broadcast material. In fact, everyone from the local car dealers to tech companies is making the jump. But, depending on the public image that a business owner wants to present, they may be OK with a DIY type of look and they may even benefit from it. But, for the average business, hiring a professional production company or advertising agency may be a better long term decision. Again, it is like doing house repairs: how much can you do on your own before calling a professional.
I am admittedly selling my own expertise and the capability of the talent pool that I have available. However, like many producers, I have been at this for several decades and have learned a lot over the years. When a company hires a good ad agency, or a competent production professional, they get our years of experience and knowledge that can help them create a look and a brand that they may not have been able to create on their own.

Preview of New Mailer

Here is a preview of the new mailer titled Creative Vision that will be going out later this summer. It was designed with the same digital theme as the previous mailer that was sent in March and it is actually 1 of 3 mailers that have been designed for this year. The third piece, titled Thinking About Your Creative, won’t go out till the fall. The initial idea for this design came from the original concept of Digital Animation (see post from March) in which a hand made of 0s and 1s draws a line that connects to images from SDA spots. This piece continues the same conceptual thread as the first mailer with the connection of the initial creative vision to the end result.

I think all 3 mailers will be strong pieces but, I do tend to like the illustration on this one.

Please feel free to make comments. Since this has not gone to the printer, any feedback would be appreciated.

Have a great day!

Tim Stevens, Directing Animator, SDA

Production Art: Bandelier mailer c.1992

Hola!

Continuing with the production artwork theme, this is a grouping of pieces that were used for a direct mail campaign back in the early nineties. Each mailer had a specific tag line using the word “reel” (as in demo reel) in conjunction with an illustration. A few of the tag lines that made the cut were Reel Time, Reel Looney and Reel Pigs.

These were produced shortly after the advent of Illustrator (c.1988) and Photoshop (c.1990) as drawing tools so they were created in the real world on Bristol board and were illustrated with markers and airbrush. However, based on what I recall from that time, I suspect that the pre-press and all of the type setting was done digitally. At that point digital page layout was referred to as desktop publishing and the capability was primal by todays standards with the software being fairly limited and very expensive.

The image below lists the artist as unknown though, I suspect that it was a very talented animator and illustrator named Bill Davis.

Thanks

Tim Stevens, Directing Animator, SDA

Production Art: Cellular One

Hola!

The background below was from a Cellular One spot that we produced in 2001 for Jordan Associates in Oklahoma City (Creative Director, Dan Martel). One of the cool parts about my job is getting to work with really  talented artists – for this spot we were able to go all out. For layout and design we had Dan Fitzgerald and painting Dan’s layouts was Andy Phillipson (Background crew on Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast). This particular background was supposed to be a take-off on the old watercolor wash backgrounds from the early Disney days specifically Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I think Andy did a really nice job of getting close to that feel.

 

Keep a look out for more production art in the future.

Thanks

Tim Stevens, Directing Animator, SDA

About the Oxberry Animation Stand

The Oxberry Animation Stand November 29, 1999

As I mentioned on the last facebook post  ( Go Here ) the Oxberry animation stand was how we shot animation for nearly 30 years. The actual process of creating and shooting cell animation however, was about the same from the early thirties up to the early nineties. The Oxberry was the Cadillac of animation stands during that era and we owned one! I later found out, after spending a few years abroad, that very few studios owned an animation stand or had immediate access to one so we were very lucky. In larger markets, like Vancouver and LA, there were handful of companies that operated several of these large metal beasts and rented them out to the various production houses. Not so with Bandelier. We spent many hours on that machine testing and shooting finals and if it broke, the camera operator was required to be the technician.

When I first started in the business we would shoot all of our tests on 16mm film and process it in the back of the studio on an old WWII vintage developer. It looked a little bit like something you would find Walter White standing at while in the process of making a batch of the “blue stuff” (inside Albuquerque humor). After getting approvals from the client on the tests – back in those days the film had to be transferred to a VHS tape and sent out via fed-ex – we would gear up to shoot the final on 35mm film. Now here is the part that made things goofy being in Albuquerque. 35mm film had to be sent out to LA to be processed.

It seemed like for years that we almost always shot finals on a Thursday starting early in the morning with the hope that we would successfully finish by 4:00 PM so someone (usually me) could drive the film out to the airport to be shipped to LA. Once in LA it was picked up by courier and delivered to CFI (Consolidated Film Industries), processed over night, and then shipped back to Albuquerque by plane. If everything worked out, I would pick the film up at the airport late on Friday afternoon, dodging traffic along the way, with everyone waiting at the office to look at the transfer (since everything was shot on negative film a rough transfer was made for viewing). If everything was OK after viewing on the old upright Moviola, we all went home and had a nice weekend. If there were errors, we started re-shooting on Friday night.

Oh, the joys of production!

You are probably wondering where the Oxberry ended up. As the caption to the facebook posting noted, the Oxberry was Dismantled on 11/29/99. Many of the larger parts where sent to a scrap yard much in the same way that Walter White’s RV was also sent to the scrap yard. The camera unit was taken by the technician, John Huber, and was probably sold to a visual effects company. The large table area, called the compound, was taken by Allan Stevens and turned into a coffee table! It resided for some time in the office, then in Allan’s home, and now it resides in my living room.

The Oxberry Animation Stand 2014

Thanks for reading

Tim Stevens, Directing Animator, SDA

 

ShopRite Super Can-Can: More Concept Art!

As a follow up to last weeks post, here is more concept art from the ShopRite Super Can-Can spot.

Along with Toulouse, the Can-Can dancers are the primary focus of the spot. Over the years they have stayed more or less the same but there were a few changes that we made to wardrobe, skirt length, and subtle variations to the character design. Overall though, the character has stayed fairly consistent.

For the 2013 ShopRite Super Can-Can spot, the creative team at Della Femina decided to turn the dancers into cheerleaders. And like Toulouse, we started out working with several retro looks inspired by different eras of football.

One of the primary challenges with the Can-Can girls is to keep them family friendly so basing the design on the current look of professional cheerleading groups was not going to work. We ultimately settled on a character model that is close to the A option of the concept art but with a higher hem line and a new color palette.

This design worked well with the animation but still maintained the characters overall attitude and integrity.

Thanks for reading.

Tim Stevens, Directing animator, SDA

ShopRite Super Can-Can: Concept art!

Hola!

Here are a few pieces of concept art produced for the ShopRite Super Can-Can spot (view it at http://www.stevensanimation.com).

This first image shows the main character Toulouse as a football player.

This character, created in 2002, has gone through several variations over the years but has remained essentially the same though his proportions have been modified along with updates to his wardrobe.

Ultimately, the client veered away from Toulouse as a football player and decided to turn him into a coach or a an official. These sketches were the selects used for presentation.

Below is a full color illustration of the character used on shopping bags at the store during the sale.

Thanks for reading!

Tim Stevens, Directing Animator, SDA

All images used in this post are the property of ShopRite Supermarkets and Wakefern Inc.

The new mailer is out!

As much as I talk about advertising, I rarely get to do it for myself. However, In between productions we were able to get a series of new mailers produced with the idea that we will have three this year going out every few months.

The newest mailer is a play on the idea that all productions still start with a person drawing an idea even if that idea ultimately turns into zeros and ones when completed.

Thanks

Tim Stevens
Directing Animator

Lots-O-Production!

Production is always a game of feast or famine and the previous year was no exception. With work coming in from markets all around the country, including animation for clients in Tampa, Miami, South Dakota, Maryland, New York and New Jersey, we produced quite a few spots. Over the coming weeks I will be posting some of those spots along with production art and explanations of how we make characters come to life. 

Thanks! 

Tim Stevens

Directing Animator, SDA

 

Fujitsu General Animation

Hola!

We recently completed a full 3D spot for Producer Ron Gianettino and his client Fujitsu General in New York city. The spot took a few months to complete but, I think it turned out real nice. Animator Josh Goble modeled, animated, and rendered the spot with a variety of tools including Maya, V-Ray, After Effects and 3D Coat.

To see the whole spot, go to the Stevens Design & Animation Facebook page at

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stevens-Design-Animation-LLC/415719735116536?ref=ts#!/pages/Stevens-Design-Animation-LLC/415719735116536

Here are a few stills.

Thanks
Tim Stevens
Directing Animator