Snoreeze Advert

Recently I got to work on an idea for a new advert for Snoreeze, a company specialising in snore relief products, nasal sprays and throat sprays. The intended audience for the advert is both genders, aged between 20-40 years of age.

The advert was only intended to be between 10-15 seconds long, so the challenge was to leave an impact in a very short space of time. I decided the best way to achieve this was to make the advert humorous, so I searched for situations in which it would be humorous or unfortunate to fall asleep.

As a result of the hype for this year's biggest film releases, such as Spectre, Jurassic World or Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I wrote a script where a young film buff falls asleep and misses an entire film on its first screening.

This is the final design for the "young film buff" who falls asleep during the movie. I recycled this design from my final BA animation, "Gopher Golf", where I had created several background characters. This character seemed to fit my idea for the Snoreeze advert best, due to his youthful, energetic and enthusiastic look and design.

As with most of my work in 2D animation, I drew the designs first, then scanned them in and coloured and perfected their designs in Photoshop. All the animation and editing for this piece was created in Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere CS6. When added up, the process of creating this advert took approximately two days.

Storyboards for 'Scream Street' Competition (CBBC)

"Scream Street" is a new stop-motion series which made its debut on CBBC in October this year. The show is made at Factory, an animation studio in Altrincham, and is owned by Coolabi.

Recently, CBBC, Factory and Coolabi launched a competition for aspiring animators in Northern England, inviting students to create a 45-second long animation featuring the show's comic relief characters, Dig the dog and Lulu the leech. Using these two characters and a selection of props (which the modelmakers at Factory have already produced), I storyboarded a short piece, imagining what these two characters would be like in a particular situation. The situation I chose was "bowling", a situation which would allow Dig to show his over-eager personality and Lulu her bossy personality.

Gopher Golf: Lip sync test #1

This video is the first lip sync test for the Golfer in 'Gopher Golf'. Here I'm testing out the idea of creating lip sync animation in Photoshop, but I feel like the styles clash here so I will likely use replacement Plasticine mouths in the final film.

Gopher Golf: Background Characters

These videos are short animations completed in Photoshop, showing the background characters for 'Gopher Golf'. These will all appear in one short clip of a crowd behind the Golfer, cheering for the winner. The characters will be in darkness as the Golfer is the scene's main focus.

Farmer

Old Man

Middle-aged woman

Young Man

Gopher Golf: Building the Golfer Puppet - Part #6

Here are some further pictures showing how the Golfer's clothes were knitted from scratch. Three alternative tops were designed for the Golfer, two including different colours of crests on them. All of the tops were mostly green in colour, as per the original design.

Gopher Golf: Building the Golfer Puppet - Part #5

Here are some more pictures from the production on the Golfer puppet.

Range of colours tried out before green (as per the original design) was decided on.

Paper which has been cut to serve as a visual aid for creating the Golfer's trousers.

Temporary casing for the Golfer, until his puppet is complete. This is mainly so as not to spoil the clothes.

Nuts and bolts are included in the Golfer's feet, to help him stand up correctly.

Gopher Golf: Building the Golfer Puppet - Part #1

The Golfer is the main character in my film "Gopher Golf" and the main puppet I am currently building for the film. I was aware from the beginning of the film's production I would be limited for time on pre-production, so I decided I would have an advantage only building one main character for the film. I would be able to spend more time focusing on the one character's performance - how he moves, his reactions to certain events and emotions, etc.

 

The character is currently being built using a Ray Harryhausen Armacreature Kit - a multi-purpose make of armature. His face, hands and shoes will use both plasticine and silicone rubber, whilst his clothes will be hand-knitted.

 

          
 


Some early animation tests were done earlier in the year, mainly to visualise how movements such as a golf swing would look on screen.

       


Some changes were made from the Golfer's original design to make the model's construction easier. The Golfer's shorts will be changed to trousers, since either can be worn in the golfing world. It will mean that I won't need to separately construct the Golfer's legs using plasticine or silicone rubber; the trousers, made with fabric, can cover the legs entirely and the two different materials (fabric and plasticine/silicone rubber) will not need to interact.

The other important change in the Golfer's final design is the hands. It was decided that the Golfer's hands should be larger and more exaggerated, since he will be handling some large and heavy props on set (i.e. golfing clubs, golf ball, newspaper, etc). This is a technique often used in children's animation such as Postman Pat and Bob the Builder - in both of these shows, a character's hand will also have four digits instead of five. Again, this is to make handling of props much easier for the stop-motion puppets. This technique is also used in the 2D animated The Simpsons for all characters besides God, although this is more due to Matt Groening's unique art style.