Not the strangest request we’ve ever had, but close. “Hey, we need to shoot an ad with three hundred clockwork  monkeys in downtown Auckland…” said producer Johnny Blick.  “Clockwork monkeys, are you winding us up?” we said.

As it turned out, he wasn’t – and the monkeys ($11.95 from Amazon) were battery operated not clockwork. “Sure, no problem.  How many of said monkeys have you got?’ we asked. “Umm, nine” says Johnny, with a straight face “that’s all they had in stock…”

We toyed with the idea of making 3D monkeys (toyed – get it?), but finally settled on shooting our small cast on location, filming  multiple takes of each shot, and moving the monkeys around between takes. We also shot groups of toys on sheets of plywood covered in digital blue-screen cloth. For each shot, the various takes were combined into a single frame, then the blue-screen “extras” were keyed, and used to fill in the gaps.

The spot was directed by Automatic Films’s Mike Olershaw, and shot on Red. “Actually, they were very easy to work with” said Mike, “although I thought some of the performances were a little mechanical. On the plus side,  they all did their own hair and wardrobe, and were happy to work for peanuts like everyone else.”

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For the second year running DDB’s Matthias May & Steve Ogilvie, and DMG turn their razor wit and withering satire to bear on a touring cricket team. This time the unsuspecting victims were our old foes the Aussies, here for a summer tour of one-dayers.

The idea hangs on the premise that this years tourists are young, nieve and inexperienced, and therefore susceptible to a carefully orchestrated campaign of miss-information, cunningly disguised as helpful hints for first-time visitors to our fair shores.

Our brilliant plan worked beautifully – the team is clearly disorientated and bewildered – several players have been reported missing at Piha beach, one has been incarcerated by MAF, and several have been detained by airport customs officials pending a full body cavity search. Oh, and Ricky Ponting was admitted to Auckland hospital with acute kumera poisoning.

Nice chaps. We do hope they enjoyed their stay.

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Helpful hints: Introduction

Helpful hints: Kumera

Helpful hints: Wood Permit

It took a while, but finally we can unveil our new animated spot for Sleepyhead Beds. Sanctuary is Sleepyhead’s new luxury bed range, and our job was to create a rich, sumptuous dream world you’ll want to return to every night. The ad features a magical landscape of mountains, meadows and waterfalls, populated by exotic flowers, fantails and even flamingos. The finished ad employs a combination of 2D and 2D animation techniques, along with live-action components and was written by Andrew Mitchell at Auckland agency Magnet, and Art Directed by Lorenz Perry of SplinterGroup. Animation and Direction duties were shared betwwn DMG’s Linds Redding and Dan Short.

Case Study: The making of Sanctuary

If you’d like to learn more about how we made the Sleepyhead Sanctary ad, we’ve written a detailed case history of the job discribing the entire production process and illustrated with storyboards, screen grabs and photos. Read it here…

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A series of 3D full page magazine illustrations for Nestle Australia, through our friends at Auckland Studio The Craft Shop. The scenes were modeled and built in Cinema4D and rendered with V-Ray.

On Friday we delivered our first job to The United Arab Emirates. For Procter & Gamble’s global Ariel brand, commissioned through Saatchi & Saatchi in Dubai. The job was completed using our usual combination of 2D and 3D animation techniques. As we have discovered before, distance really was’nt a big issue – in spite of the 8 hour time difference. Communication with client and agency was excellent, feedback was timely and clear, and as a result the job was turned around comfortably inside the stipulated five working days from start to finish.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the caption says “Same Low Price”. Which only goes to show that advertising really is the same the world over…

These 3D virtual sets were created for Saatchi & Saatchi’s Telecom NXT Network launch campaign, although regrettably never used. (We actually had nothing to do with the ads that eventually ran.) The environments were modeled in Cinema4D and rendered with V-Ray.

We recently produced this simple but bold animated endframe sequence for Ink Energy drink, for Art Director Emanuel Bougneres at Colenso BBDO. The animated type was created by setting up our Canon EOS40D digital still camera under a back-lit sheet of glass, and dropping ink onto sheets of wet newsprint. The resulting inkblots were captured at 6fps, then sped up and layered in Adobe AfterEffects. You can watch the complete ad on Best Ads on TV or at www.absenceoffear.co.nz.

The folks at SkyTV, no doubt mindful of the imminent arrival of TiVo on our shores, commissioned this energetic 60″ spot through DMG regulars DDB Auckland to explain the benefits of their fiendishly clever new MySky high definition receiver/recorder- which ironically, lets you fast-forward through the adverts amongst other things. Created by agency creative team Dave Brady and Joe Hawkins, and produced at break-neck speed,  we were required to build all manner of elaborate 3D mechanisms including a fold-out cinema screen and a collapsible brass band. Our animation is complimented perfectly by brilliant sound design from Jon Cooper at Liquid Studios.

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Stash 56 Magazine page. Click to enlarge.

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