Rountrees Advert

Unfortunately some of our group members lost contact with each other and we were unable to pull together all the elements that should have made for a complete advert, myself and Mark could not find out what became of the colour scheme designs but we did press on with animating by ourselves and this was what we made.

The plain green backdrop had a dule purpose, it was the colour of the park in which our story is set but also it was the distinct green colour ascociated with the Rountrees logo and particularly the Fruit Pastilles product. We initially intended to colour in the character but after looking back on my research into artists and film makers such as Quentin Blake and Grant Orchard we felt that we could really push the child like quality's of the drawings as if this advert was a doodle, a naive illustration. Although parts of it are very unpolished and I myself would have preffered to add colour and smooth the animation I think the point of our advert comes across quite well.

Evaluation.

Working as a group so far has proved rather unsuccessful, for various reasons there was a lack of communication amongst us which lead to a broken design process however when we did pull together our work effort was very good and some of that can be seen in the final advert. I struggled to see where I could fit into this process as I was assigned to do the character designs and then no more was said, perhaps if more organisation was applied to our group we could have creativly pushed all our work. I suppose the purpose of 'group' projects is to give us a taste of what its like in the industry when collaborating with others however the format in which this course presents the module is rather poor, its pot luck if you end up with hard working group members and if you end up with those who are not motivated then your work quality suffers, in the real world it would be your job to work therefore a solid motivation is present in all workers. Sadly this project has not shown me anything about how to collaborate with others, the theory behind it may work on paper but in practise-it doesnt work! Maybe work experience IN the industry might truly show us how team effort is essential in the animation industry.

Line Tests

For the line tests we wanted to ensure that we understood the motion of chewing and how that might come across in our advert. I took some photos of myself acting out the chewing and picked out the key movements, from these three alone you could loop a crude chewing animation. From these we were able to make varied line tests.

This video was a short study of chewing with your mouth open and baring your teeth.

Although the fruitpastilles themselves are very small we wanted to really exaggerate the chewing motion and the bulge on the cheek as if this was something to really take your time eating. This line tests was made to see how the mouth would move and how much it was exaggerated, in the end this we felt it was almost right but needed to be exaggerated more.

In our storyboard we have a scene where the Grandmother's teeth 'jump' out of her mouth and start to snap at the fruitpastilles in the girl's hands. We needed to make sure we understood and had reference points for how false teeth moved and they might be animated in our advert. We made several line tests to show the 'gnashing' motion, the bounce and the pace. We found various useful videos on youtube to use as reference.

Animatic

After reviewing Mark's storyboard we started to think about the pace and feel of the animation. To do this we made an animatic with the Flash program, our other group members were assigned to create the colour scheme based on all our research but at the time of making this we had not heard from them so we chose to ignore the colour for the time being. In order to get the timing right and basic gestures in place we drew very loose thumbnails of our characters and didnt concern ourselves too much with detail, our priority was seeing if the advert flowed nicely. There are a few scenes that we making sure were right and they were: the Product being shown clearly in the hands of the user, the chewing action ( we ensured there were three scenes of this to reinforce that element) and the final shot being the product fully visible with room for a tagline on the screen.

Character Sheets

After agreeing upon the design of the outfits we eventually settled upon a modern jacket look to bring the grandaughter away from the cliche 'princess' look and more into modern fashion that can be seen today, ironically this was alot closer to my earlier sketches of the girl.

From the earlier sketches I polished and simplified the facial fetures of the Grandmother whilst being sure to include the important elements such as the pronounced chin, to enable strong chewing actions to be animated, black dots for eyes and basic circular shapes for her body in keeping with the influences of Grant Orchard.



The outfit on the Grandaughter gives her a slightly sophisticated appearance however when animating we will be sure to bring out the innocent elements to her character so as not be unfamilar with the target audience she represents.

I have incorperated some of the dress shapes from my research pictures into the young Grandmother's design. I did however simplfiy it significantly so as not to concern outselves too much with the details and to focus more on animating.

Outfit Research

To come with specific designs of our characters we discussed the type of clothing they should wear to illustrate their personality, our Grandaughter is a product of our modern culture and so she demonstrates our target audience. We came up with various ideas and initially settled on a steroetypical image of a girl in a dress. I did some research into the type of clothes that can be found in our culture today and took some photos of outfits I thought would suit our character.

For the modern day girl I thought a jacket such as this would suit the tone and colour of our advert, circle patterns also lend themselves to Grant Orchard's style.

This dress could applyto both the granddaughter and/or the young grandmother. Its has an old fashioned quality to it whilst still feeling quite modern. I particularly like the green on this as it reflects the logo colour of fruit pastilles.

Another variation of dress research, the pattern might be far too complicated to add as Animation requires simplicity of design and economy of linework.

Again this outfit's pattern is far too complicated but i think this style suits the design of our Grandmother character, her body proportions would be drastically different to the size below.

Character Thumbnails

Based upon a loose idea of a tagline 'You just can't help but chew' or a variation of those words we created two characters, one being a granddaughter and the other being the grandmother. The setting is a local park and the pair of them are sat on the bench, the girl is eating Rountrees fruit pastels and the granny asks if she can have one, upon being given one and savouring the taste ( chewing element will be shown here) the granny has a flash back as she eats. She experiences a memory of herself as a young girl eating fruit pastels on the same bench and with a flash back to the present day she demands another sweet from her grandaughter in a rather comical way. Suprisingly the Grandmother's false teeth fly out and begin to 'bite' at the sweets in the girls hands causing her to run away with the chattering teeth chasing. The scene ends with a close up, again, of the fruit pastals left half open in the bench with the logo clearly visible and the tagline across the screen.

Below are some thumbnail sketches of both the grandchild and the grandmother in her youth, I tried to incorperate elements such as the black dots for eyes, simplistic dress sense ( to be researched into further) and child like proportions with large head and small limbs etc.

When it came to designing the granny we had to consider multiple things ranging from her body proportions, her hairstyle and the extent of which her age hindered her to comical effect etc. Below are some sketches that tried to visualise some of these elements. One part Im particularly fond of is the gurning chin look upon her face, a stereotypical image of grandmother's with false teeth. The group decided that they prefered the hair tied up into a bunch to be added to the final character sheets.

Artist Research

After reviewing previous advertisement campaigns we realised that a particular style or artist is chosen to spearhead such commercials, after doing some research I found a current example of such a marketing ploy. The bupa adverts have recently launched a series of short commercials using the creative influences and designs of Director Grant Orchard.

Regardless of its context this advert has a lasting impact upon the viewers mind because of its choice of bold, simple colours and its simplistic character designs. Squares, circles, triangles etc, these are the simple shapes that are animated to comic effect, its lack of detail allows for some playful animation and its financial strengths is that it seems very easy to produce. These are some of the principles we are hoping to incorporate into own designs.For some inspiration in regards to character designs I turned to some of my favourite illustrators for their iconic art style.

Quentin Blake is best known for his Roal Dahl illustrations which often look very loose, incorperates washed colour schemes and full of exaggerated anatomy.

These are some of the qualities that I hope to add into the design process, I particularly feel that alot of the principles of Animation can be seen throughout his artwork. The anatomy is used and manipulated for comic effect, the colour schemes are simplistic and even when crowded still carry a coherent feeling and, most importantly, the designs of the characters themselves are easy to duplicate when animating.

When studying Quentin Blake's illustrations I have picked out some things I shall include into my character designs. Eyes, in animation, can be a source of real frustration to an animator if focused too heavily upon e.g a particular scene can demand a specific amount of emotive language just from the eyes, but what I love about these drawings is the simplicity of the eyes, in some cases mere black dots, and how they can be used to save a huge amount of work and still work effectively in an animation.

Oliver Jeffers is another illustrator who shares some similarities to Quentin Blake in terms of their artistic styles but Jeffers caught my eye for a very different reason.

To break away from the mundane backgrounds often found in ullustrations, Oliver Jeffers instead used his backgrounds within the context of his stories. In his story 'The Incredible Book Eating Boy' it follows a boy who develops a strange eating habit of consuming books, throughout the story the illustrations appear to be created on various book surfaces ranging from hardback book covers to maths paper and then scanned in as the finshed image. This adds a wonderful layer to both the illustrations and the story and that sort of creative fun could be applied to our advert.

Good Adverts, Bad Adverts

After doing some research I came across some adverts that have gained considerable fame with their audiences and I wanted to continue the analysis of the marketing ploys behind them.

The Red Bull adverts have gained considerable fame because of the instantly recognisable animation style. Reminiscent of the Roald Dahl illustrations, their use of minimaly coloured characters often seen against a white backdrop helps to make the viewer instantly aware of what he is watching and what product it belongs to. Animation has its advantages over live action footage because it can follow some of the principals. For example Exaggerating is clearly used throughout the performance of the characters to help sell the humour, something live action would struggle to do so effectively. Also the nature of its simple animation makes it easier to produce multiple shorts in a serial as part of a long marketing campaign. This is an obvious example of how animation has its advantages in the advertisement industry.



There are however good examples of bad adverts, something which i thought would be useful to take a look at. Its good to observe successful adverts to try and understand their success but I think its also important to look at why others have not been successful, that way we know what kind of material has not gone down well with a certain audience in the past. Below are some example of banned adverts.




The reasons for this being banned is obvious, the Character is just too scary and leaves a rather disturbing image in the minds of children. This is a design fault in the production, a misunderstanding of their target audience and its tolerence levels. I think had this advert been 2d animation the design of his character might of worked unchanged beause it would have been less intimidating as the disturbing realistic nature of its skin wouldnt apply to 2d animation, therefore avoiding the design flaw just by changing the process.





This commercial used slapstick humour as its marketing ploy but where others were careful to be restained this advert had a backfiring effect. The use of slapstick violence encouraged some viewers to perform the slapping action on real members of the public, this is an example of how implimenting violence without thinking about the concequences can lead to a failure in a marketing campaign, this is something to consider when choosing to add any form of violence into the animation.

Advertisement Analysis

Our group was tasked with making an advertisement for Rountrees sweets. To start off with we looked at previous advertisements and made note of their catch phrases and seriel gags used throughout.

Their earliest one had catch phrases such as ' Only Rountrees Know how to get the best out of fruit' and their most famous one to date was 'I bet you cant...' where a child would challenge an adult, with some other impressive skill they would show off e.g Basketball skills, to put one of the sweets in their mouth without chewing and ultimately failing. This brings the element of chewing to the forefront and highlights the selling point. Their previous adverts can be viewed on their webiste: www.rowntrees.co.uk/home/

Other adverts have used gags to help make their products memorable in peoples minds. A recent add from cadbury's chocolate used a Gorrilla who played the drums to a phil colin's song. The random humour that is applied to this advert causes people to talk about it, either loving or hating it is actually part of the marketing ploy. Another thing to note is the use of purple in the background, this makes the viewer aware it is linked to Cadbury's chocolate.

Softmints Advert, Mr Soft

One of our tasks was to observe an advert for Softmints and to understand the design process behind its making. We were tasked with watching the video and to break down its scenes into 'frames'. In this way we were able to work backwards and create the storyboard from the video.

The average amount of 'frames' required for this kind of advertisement is around 15+. This allows for the varied camera angles, the action being performed within a specific scene and some of the establishing shots of the product to be displayed. What I did find interesting about the process was coming to understand the thinking process of how the softmint advert was made. The choice of character, the background design, pace of the story, the selective close ups of the product etc.