Saturday, July 30, 2011

Batman Zellers Commercial Series: Joker, Catwoman, Penquin, and Riddler

I've gathered all four Batman Zellers Commercials. Each has a "Guest Starring" Villain.


As you watch all four in sequence, you can't help but note that the animation falls into one of three categories. Scenes are either:
1) reused in its totality from commercial to commercial;
2) totally unique to that specific commercial;
3) reused with some adjustments for the dialogue specific to that commercial.


I will be talking in future posts about the reality of how to get the biggest bang for the animation dollar when trying to produce a quality piece. There's much more to it than just drawing quickly and putting in long hours hunched over your drawings.









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7 comments:

  1. Michael SpornJuly 30, 2011 at 8:27 AM

    Great lip-synch throughout on all those closeups. Nice job.

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  2. Brett W. McCoyJuly 30, 2011 at 1:22 PM

    These are great!

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  3. John CelestriJuly 30, 2011 at 3:29 PM

    Thank you both.

    Michael, doing the lip-synch was a challenge, as I never got to see any pencil tests. I did a lot of closeup studying of myself in a mirror to analyze various eye and mouth expressions that might work with the dialogue.

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  4. Mike DeBrosseJuly 30, 2011 at 5:14 PM

    I love these for their creative use of perspective that you just don't see anymore. I was wondering if you could talk about your workflow in these or in general? Do you look for previously animated reference, do you look in a mirror constantly like in the previous post, or do you just go off of thumbnails? It could be a mix of all 3. Maybe this is a long future post but i would really like to know. Thank you for these!

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  5. John CelestriJuly 31, 2011 at 7:23 AM

    To Mike D:

    The scenes were laid out to reflect the stylistic ambiance of The Batman comic books, so the manner in which to use the camera setups was already established. However, the forced perspective of actions such as pointing towards camera, etc added an element that gave "pop" to the commercials.

    Your question regarding how I work requires a number of long posts (or even more bit-sized ones) ;-). So, that information will be coming in the future.

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  6. Steve HinckleyDecember 19, 2011 at 12:44 AM

    I heard someone say the studio that was used for these commercials was the same studio that did the test animation for "Batman: TAS". Do you know the name of the studio that did these?

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  7. John CelestriDecember 19, 2011 at 11:29 AM

    Steve: The name of the animation studio is Lightbox Studios, Inc located in Toronto, Canada; owned and run by Greg Duffell.

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