Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/455278
www.postmagazine.com 33 POST JANUARY 2015 Honda wanted you to recapture that feeling once again with a slightly higher priced "toy" during its "Happy Honda Days Sales Event" showcased at the end of 2014 in its A Gift to Remember cam- paign from agency RPA. Bicoastal Psyop (www.psyop.tv) teamed with LA's Screen Novelties stop-motion studio to create the nostal- gia-filled TV spots (one commercial, fea- turing Fisher Price's Little People, spans several generations), as well as an "ex- tras" for social media. Psyop's Fletcher Moules and Todd Mueller directed, using the toys to illustrate various attributes of the cars (like rear-view safety cameras) in a homey, holiday car showroom. The toughest part of the campaign was tearing the directors away from playtime with the vintage toys purchased for the spots. "I got to animate He-Man and Skeletor, just like I did as a kid with my VHS recorder: record, pause, record, pause," laughs Moules. In pre-pro he and Mueller spent a day with a camera, a Honda Odyssey and all the toys "playing like 10-year olds" to "discover how to tell stories inside a [real] car." From the start, they felt strongly about using actual vintage toys, not pho- toreal 3D models, to convey the sense of nostalgia at the heart of the spots. The only exception was the Little People spot, which required hoards of the tiny cylindrical toys best executed in 3D. All of the toys were cut open to ac- commodate wire armatures for stop-mo- tion animation; Stretch Armstrong was also recast, molded and remade for one sequence where he needed to reach from the backseat to the dashboard. The car exteriors were shot with Arri Alexa in an empty dealership dressed like a holiday living room. Then the directors moved to Screen Novelties to shoot stop motion with a Canon EOS 5D for almost three weeks. "We had two stages with real cars and motion control," says Moules. "The cars were up on jacks. We had to work around the physicality of the vehicles, removing certain doors and seats and the windshields so we could get in the cars with the toys and not be hindered by the camera or motion-control arm." Only a few shots were greenscreen because of the camera angles they want- ed to capture — like the shot of Gumby and Pokey peering down the cup holder as if it were a cave. The fun scenarios, developed by RPA and Psyop, matched the personalities of the toys. One of Moules' favorites has Gumby and Pokey repelling down the dashboard with the same sense of adventure they used to get from crossing from one end of the living room to the other, he notes. Stretch Armstrong is revealed coming out of the trunk; GI Joe tosses a grappling hook over the rear- view mirror — a disco mirror ball on the other end. Jem's hair blows in the breeze of the vent. Gumby had a wardrobe of face parts, "hand cut, sticker shapes to remove and replace to give him expressions," Moules explains. Most other moving toy mouths were done in CG. "For Stretch and Jem, we modeled their faces in CG, lip syn- ched them in CG, then composited the CG face from the nose down onto the stop-motion characters." The Little People, who assume a tower formation so they can look through the car windows, were modeled and animat- ed in Maya and rendered in Arnold. "We shot a plate of the real toys — with us holding them in place — on-set for light- ing and scale references," says Moules. The dealership settings were composited with Nuke and Flame. BREWSTER PARSONS Fire King Vargas and Lava square off for a sword fight, and he looks cocky about besting her in one-on-one combat until the camera pulls back to reveal a vast army silhouetted behind Lava. "It's good to have friends," says the voiceover in the animated spot for Gumi's Brave Frontier, a classic role-playing game for Androids, iPhones and tablets. Brewster Parsons (www.brewsterpar sons.com) in Venice, CA, was tasked by Gumi and agency Ignited with giving a "Western Anime" look to the animation for Brave Frontier: One on One + 500, using the game design as a jumping off point. "Western anime" would give the characters a more elongated, sinewy and grittier look without losing the specifics that make each character unique. "Gumi loves all the classic '90s anime," Gumi's Brave Frontier spot brings a "Western" look to traditional Anime. CONTINUED ON PG 46 VFX FOR SPOTS