Animated Commercials from the 1990s.

I grew up watching and enjoying animated commercials and have recently transfer several pencil tests and animatics of these animated commercials to the Animateducated YouTube channel for all to enjoy and learn from. 

Here is an early stop motion of the smiling and rather scary looking Jolly Green Giant from the 1950s.

Advertisers cleverly discovered that the spokesperson of their product needed to be appealing to kids as well as adults.

When I was a kid, I remembering hearing a familiar jiggle and seeing a commercial about canned vegetables. The older commercial showed a live action Green Giant standing in the distance proudly admiring the crops below. Over time, I learned that this was the Green Giant who lived in the valley of the Jolly Green Giant. Apparently he owned the land and his own company which was named after him.

Soon the Jolly Green Giant must have lost his appeal, because soon a younger spokesperson came along called "The Little Green Sprout." It might be years or centuries before he could retire, so the Sprout was introduced with his own origin commercial in the 1970s.

Then there were the Keebler Elves, who had a bakery in an old hallow tree where they made cookies at first and then branched out to crackers of all sorts. Below is a great example of a test spot or an animatic, a roughly animated storyboard followed by the final commercial. This was from the early 1990s, a year after Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. These are the Bill and Ted teen elves who are obsessed a new product called Pizzarias! 

 

Ad agencies were hired to develop these animated pitchmen who could be human like or an animal with human traits which an audience could identify with instantly.

Here's a whole series of different stages of production for one Keebler commercial featuring a live action background, miniature props, pencil tests, color product images and final inked and painted animation. 

Other commercials began combining live action and animation with the success of Roger Rabbit. Here is a fun Froot Loops spot with a live actor, a boat and giant fruit props that drop into a lake.

You can enjoy more pencil tests and making of commercials as well as other animated educational videos on YouTube at Animateducated. Subscribe to the channel to see more future videos!

Let's Anijam!

I have posted this idea in the past, but I don't think anyone could understand what I was talking about. I would like to get a small group of animators together to do a Halloween them anijam. What is an Anijam? Here's one I did in the past with interested co workers when we were all working at Vinton Studios in the late 90s.

Every animator would be given an image to start and end with. All the different short films would be edited together to create a longer film. If you are interested in participating in this project, please sign the form below and we can go from there.

Summer is nearing to a close and again, it looks like nobody is interested it this project. (big sigh) Oh Well....

Pencil Test test

I have a box of old VHS tapes which I am currently exacting gold from the video recorded images into digital files. Most of these are pencil test which I collected from working on Animaniacs at StarToons back in the 90's. 

And so, this is a test to see if I can post these tests for other animators to view and study. I am not selling these or claim to have invented the show or episodes, I only have a copy of these rare pencil tests which I would like to share with you and other interested folks.

Here's a pencil test from an episode I worked on called "And Justice for Slappy".

I don't know if I will be able to post more pencil tests, so this is just a test to see if I can post them under the title of Educational Purposes only. So, let me know if you liked what you saw and if you would like to see more, because I have quite a few.