TV ad using Anime Studio

[BunyanFilms]

Hi
I have just finished producing our first TV ad utilizing Anime Studio. We'll probably do a bit of tweaking here and there but we are very happy with the results. We didn't try anything overly difficult and kept everything simple.
I would value any comments. This ad will air nationally shortly in Australia.
Check it out
http://www.shoalhaven.net.au/~bunyanfil ... 0Final.mov

It was a great little job to try out the software.

[toonertime]

great ad concept! What approach did you use
to bring the toons into the video?

[BunyanFilms]

We animated the characters with the video footage on AS then turned off the video layer to render them as a sequence of PNGs. This was then imported into Final Cut. It was edited, colour graded and rendered out from Final Cut.

[FCSnow]

It's a great spot! One question, you have a created a number of characters for the stage, but don't seem to have much screen time. Is there more to this advert than we've seen or will we see more of them in later spots? It would be a waste if we didn't.

F.C.Snow

[BunyanFilms]

This spot is an on-going series of spots for this company. We have been producing the ads for two years. Here is another ad we did preceding this one.
http://www.shoalhaven.net.au/~bunyanfil ... 0Cream.mov
I designed all the characters and the concepts. It seems to be working very well for the company.

[jahnocli]

He he! Great stuff...

[FCSnow]

Another great spot, even greater. That makes me feel better. So many times I have made artwork or animations for other people and companies only to see it thrown away.

Again great work. Keep it up.

F.C.Snow

[human]

Shrewd use of animation--cutting down on the the labor-intensive screen time of characters by using live video. Good move.

The best thing was the over-the-shoulder view of the stalwart deliveryman character. Are there any problems in animating the shadow gradients?

I need to point out one small artistic flaw, though: the scarlet on the drums doesn't properly belong in your color scheme--which is orange, yellow, and blue.

[BunyanFilms]

Thanks for the comments
Human: You're right about the red drums, but I was guided a bit by the drums that were actually on stage. I know in the final edit you can't see them now but some other live action shots had them a bit more prominent so I thought I'd better keep them similar in case the were visible.

Regarding the shadows. Yes they were a pain at first. They were on a separate layer and would just not move with the bones properly. I tried manually attaching the bones to the character. I then manually attached the bones to the shadows as well and it worked. So the shadows move exactly right. I didn't think that you could attach multiple layers to bones, guess you can.

[touchdown]

We animated the characters with the video footage on AS then turned off the video layer to render them as a sequence of PNGs. This was then imported into Final Cut. It was edited, colour graded and rendered out from Final Cut.

Why did you export as PNGs? Is there a problem with quality by rendering out to a video format and importing?

I'm just curious. I use Sony Vegas 7 rather than FCP, so I'm always curious to these sorts of things.

Thanks!

[BunyanFilms]

Touchdown: I exported the animation as a PNG sequence because I've found that on my Mac exporting a Quicktime movie sometimes crashes. Also the working live action files were interlaced and I wanted the editor to de-interlace them in editing to integrate the animation properly. We then also needed to do a colour grade on the shots. It's also easy to shuffle PNG sequences around the various remote studio facilities as they are amazingly small for the quality and properties of them.

[touchdown]

ok thanks.

I hadn't considered the interlaced connection.
I don't mix things like that too much.

[Mikdog]

very very cool