American Cinematographer - April 1991 - 77

storyboard out of that, and General Mills
liked it, so that was the basis for the spot."
Grey took the concept to several
houses, including Colossal, and liked
their discussion and approach. Those
early discussions consisted mainly of
rough
verbal

he be? Should he be wiggly lines? Should
he be cel animation? We were looking for
a

person

who drew in

a style we liked."
As each segment began to refine

itself through the creative process,
commercial began to take shape. At

the
this

sketches of how

best to achieve the
ideas - turn them
into a television
version of reality.

sponds, "Because we thought it would look
cool."
Of course, there's more to it than that.
"The art director from Grey Advertising,
Richard Kushel, was extremely influential
in all decisions like that. This spot was very
much his baby, and the boards were a re¬
sult of good design decisions on his part."
With the concepts firmly in hand,

CToemlviesrcoianls

Noyes and Colossal turned to the incredibly

Noyes recalls being
excited by the pos¬
sibilities from the
start.

"With a lot of
cereal commercials
with a lot of

-

commercials

general

in

the job
create special
-

is to
effects. This

was

Opposite
child

page:

separate element in

board. It was more
of a concept board

this shot, as well as
the Honeycomb and

the

challenge
was finding differ¬
ent ways of get¬
ting funny ideas

-

across.

right

I felt it was

up my alley.
"Take the idea

character. Above

-

and far

right: A tilted

set was built for

these Kovacs-

inspired shenani¬
Right: The box

and the bowl

were

little animated character holds up a
honeydipper. What's he going to look like?
Who's going to design him? Should he have
a

little

Paintbox. More
that later.

gans.

telescope. It just opened itself up to a lot
of imaginative ways of visualizing things."
A mixture of many styles became
the goal. Colossal took the storyboard, and
with the collaboration of Grey, began to
develop images, looks and approaches for
each of the separate segments. Design
magazines were perused for ideas and
freelance designers and illustrators in the
area were asked to develop concepts.
"Some of the images ended up being ex¬
actly like their board, and some ended up
being completely different from their board.
We brought in 30 or 40 portfolios, mostly
from illustrators. We were looking for the
right character, the right animation style -
anything. For example, there's a shot where

nose or a

important tool was
you guessed it
a Harry digital
compositing system
augmented
by

-

a

big

cials. Their most

the animated

built big; the
of 'big kids/small
honeycombs were
laid in later.
kids' - there are
lots of fun and un¬
usual ways to show big kids and small kids.
A kid next to the Empire State Building, then
next to an ant hole. A magnifying glass and

a

ogy behind so many
of today's commer-

was a

special effects

not a

powerful technol¬

Each

nose,

how old should

a

on

Early on,
Macintosh with

Photoshop soft¬
ware

allowed

point, the technical necessities also begin

Noyes to make a
computer version of
a rough sketch for the honeydipper section,

to make themselves known. Which techni¬

where

cal skills and tools are necessary to make
these amorphous ideas work? Will a certain

honeydipper. Noyes explains: "We shotthe
honeydipper, and had a 3/4 cassette made
of the rushes. We scanned an image into
the Mac, and took various designs of our

concept require blue screen? A forced per¬

spective set? All along the way, decisions
are made with an eye towards what is
"neat," and what is reasonably affordable.
Some of the segments were
quite straightforward. "We knew that we
wanted one segment to be clay animation.
The board showed a guy falling back and

becoming

a splash of milk. We hired a
number of people and had them submit
different designs for the character, picked
one,

and had

turn him into

our

artist here in the studio

clay and animate him."
It seems that one of the keys to
making a successful children's commercial
is having an unerring eye for what is "in"
what the kids will respond to. Asked to
explain certain design elements, Noyes re¬

-

April 1991

an

animated character wields a real

characters, scanned those into the Mac,
and did a down and dirty composite with the
software to see how the different charac¬
ters looked using the honeydipper. We did
that in several instances to preview what
some of these special effects would look
like. It's a great help in making decisions.

"Once we decided which ani¬
mated character looked best, we rendered
it up in full color, and animated and pro¬
duced it as a two second piece of anima¬

tion, using paper. We used paper because
there's a subtle kind of coloring, and if we
had done it cel, it would have ended up
more like a traditional cartoon. We were

trying to stay

American

away

from anything that

Cinematographer

75
American Cinematographer - April 1991

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