Commercial Beton

Character Design, Direction, Animation

The TV commercial for the German concrete industry is about the girl Nina who, in her dream, has an encounter with the big, bad wolf and the three little pigs, and about her reader-uncle, TV presenter Günther Jauch.

The dream part was conceived as an animation in classical 1940s cartoon style.

At the beginning, the overall look of characters and backdrops was designed.

We developed the character design, model sheets, storyboards, key framing and backdrop-paintings — the tweening and clean-ups were done externally.

Left: down to the last detail, the external artists were instructed how to match their realization of the characters to the model sheets.

We carried out the actual direction in parallel to the keyframing.

Both the movement of the characters and the movement of the virtual camera were determined in the keyframe drawings.

A ground plan was prepared in order to provide everyone involved in the production with the same „vision“ of the location.

It is crucial for the impact of an outdoor scene, if and how much the position of the horizon within the picture frame changes between shots.

To emphasize that the wolf is preparing his attack on the piglet's house with the cold-blooded calm of the besieger, this sequence was constructed with a steady, position-stable horizon.

Below: when the action comes to a climax, the camera changes to frog eye's perspective, with alternating long shot and close-up.

Above: the wolf's wind wonder weapon works better than expected — but the piglets’ house happens to be made of concrete.

The outline-drawings were colored and combined with the painted backdrops.

The backdrop-paintings simulate the mixed technique of airbrush and gouache which is typical of the cartoons of the 1940s.

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