I made some basic mock ups of how I want my animation to look. . .
I really don't like the drawn box and bow! I am thinking of using real wrapping paper and maybe creating a stop motion animation for the unwrapping of the present, I will have to research this and see if it could work. I really like the script font 'Lauren Script' for the Babycham logo at the end.
For my background I want a dark blue paint, I thought it would look good painted on fabric for a textured finish, I painted some fabric and scanned it in... When the paint had dried it looked a little to dark so I made a brighter blue rectangle on top and changed the opacity in Illustrator... I really want my whole advert to pretty much be 'handmade' so I made a bottle by painting with thick oil paints and cutting out a bottle shape, for the label I added some scrunched brown paper and added the text in Illustrator, I had to warp the text to arc... I made the cork by using the brown paper again and cut out the cork shape in Photoshop... All of my paintings and textures are not perfect looking, I want it to be like this for the feel of the piece. For the snowflakes originally I drew in Illustrator... I made the snowflake and ice blue colour, they would've been all different cold colours in the animation. After showing my idea to my tutors we decided it would be more appropriate to make paper snowflakes and scan them in instead. I made 3 different versions, I will be using all 3 in my animation... I had to cut out the backgrounds in Photoshop... For my gist wrapping I am using real Christmas wrapping paper. I am going to use stop motion for the unwrapping of my bottle, I did this by taking a series of photographs of the wrapping paper, each time ripping a little more until it was all gathered at the bottom... I then imported all the photos in Photoshop, copied them into single separate layers and had to cut round them, leaving the background transparent... There were 27 separate layers/images, so this took rather a long time! This is what all the cut up layers look like on top of each other! I quite like it! Not that you will see it like that in the animation, but I do love torn paper! When the liquid comes bursting out of the Babycham bottle I thought it would look good as lots of little bubbles, these won't be handmade but made in Illustrator, I made them using shapes and blend modes...
What made me decide on the Christmas advert is the music I wanted to use. My favourite Christmas song! 'Just Like Christmas' by a band called Low, it is such a beautiful song and quirky and charming...
From finding the song I wanted I started to think of the narrative of the advert and sketching ideas. Here are my storyboards...
I then cut my song down to 30 seconds which is how long the advert must be. I did this using Soundbooth Pro and decided to come in nearer the end of the song with the echo drums and bells starting off, I'm really pleased with the music, it sounds fab and will look great with the finished piece!
I then made an Animatic for my advert, I made this in After Effects and put my music to it...
I have decided to go with the brand Babycham. Babycham is such an out of date brand and is always looked down upon. People think of Babycham and think tacky, out of date and cheap. I want to use the 'tackyness' of babycham and make it 'cool'. The whole over the top, vintage, kitsch look is seen as cool and trendy nowadays, I think I can make a Babycham advert that emphasises that. I thought it would be a good idea to do a Christmas advert seeing as it is coming up so quickly, Christmas also fits with the brans (the main Babycham adverts I remeber have been for Christmas).
When I first thought of using Babycham, I thought of the opening titles to the hit US show 'Bewitched' - The classic script title glittering against the night time background, along with the main character on a broomstick flying amongst the glittering stars... This is the sort of thing I want to create, I like the idea of using a scruipt typeface for the Babycham logo..
I also want to try and handmake everything in the advert.
My idea is this:
A Christmas present perfectly wrapped (oversized ribbons n'all)
The text 'What do you want for Christmas?' appears then dissapears
The present unwraps itself to reveal the gift...
A bottle of Babycham
The bottle wobbles as if going to burst
The cork explodes of the top of the bottle and Babycham is spraying into the air
As the Baycham stops spraying it starts falling, but as snowflakes
The snowflakes fall and fall until they gather on the ground
The words 'All you need is' appears
Underneath the word Babycham writes itself in a script font and glistening against the nightime background, above the snowflakes.
I would like the background to be a painted texture scanned in. Maybe thick acrylics so you can see the texture of the paint or maybe even paint on ridged cardboard or fabric?
The snowflakes I think would look really cool as paper snowflakes (as in the ones you make at primary school!) A few different styles, sizes and textures...
The bottle is a tricky one as I don't want it to look to 'kids collage'. I'm thinking of painting it, or maybe making it out of cut out paper, I don't want to use a real label either, that will be painted too. The cork would look cool if I scanned some cork in and made a cork shape in illustrator? Or even taking a photograph of a cork and using that? I think that would look good popping off into the sky if it was real rather than painted or drawn digitally.
The present could look good with scanned in Christmas wrapping paper? Or maybe experimenting in illustrator with different textures? I would like a velvet ribbon - I think I will try scanning in a real ribbon or maybe just the fabric if that doesn't work out...
I have narrowed down the brands I want to use too: Smirnoff, Sailor Jerrys, Winter Pimms or Babycham. On this post I will be looking at their advertising campaigns of the past and try to come up with some ideas...
Smirnoff:
The famous 'Sea' TV advert...
The Smirnoff moving adverts are always big budget, clever adverts that make a big impact on the viewer, they aren't forgotten quickly and fit with the Vodka brand very well.
The still image adverts for Smirnoff I'm not as keen on. They are always very simple and quite boring in some ways. i like the Smirnoff Ice ad in the snow but apart from that all I found in my research was pretty dull images.
Sailor Jerry Rum:
The advert below seems more for Sailor Jerry merchandise than the drink, although the song is about rum and it states 'Please drink responsively'
I don't actually believe that the Sailor Jerry advert below is even real! Apparently it is but it is awful... I definitely do not want to do anything like this!
Although I didn't find any Sailor Jerry commercials I liked, I did find a lot of still adverts... I love the style of Sailor Jerry rum, the packaging, the tattoo inspired design - Which is a huge part of Sailor Jerry, many people have Sailor Jerry tattoos themselves and of course their clothing...
Winter Pimms:
Winter Pimms pretty much uses the classic Pimms advert in reverse for the Christmas season...
This seems to be the only Winter Pimms advert I can find! Seems ridiculous, although this is the only one I can actually remember!
Babycham:
The classic tacky Babycham adverts...
The advert below is probably the worst advert I have ever seen! Brilliant! haha..
This one is probably up there too!
I really like the still advert below. Its 1960s and quite kitsch, I think this sort of thing could work for a modern Babycham advert...
When the paint had dried it looked a little to dark so I made a brighter blue rectangle on top and changed the opacity in Illustrator... 
I really want my whole advert to pretty much be 'handmade' so I made a bottle by painting with thick oil paints and cutting out a bottle shape, for the label I added some scrunched brown paper and added the text in Illustrator, I had to warp the text to arc... 
I made the cork by using the brown paper again and cut out the cork shape in Photoshop... 
All of my paintings and textures are not perfect looking, I want it to be like this for the feel of the piece. For the snowflakes originally I drew in Illustrator... 
I made the snowflake and ice blue colour, they would've been all different cold colours in the animation. After showing my idea to my tutors we decided it would be more appropriate to make paper snowflakes and scan them in instead. I made 3 different versions, I will be using all 3 in my animation... 
I had to cut out the backgrounds in Photoshop... 
For my gist wrapping I am using real Christmas wrapping paper. I am going to use stop motion for the unwrapping of my bottle, I did this by taking a series of photographs of the wrapping paper, each time ripping a little more until it was all gathered at the bottom... 
I then imported all the photos in Photoshop, copied them into single separate layers and had to cut round them, leaving the background transparent... 
There were 27 separate layers/images, so this took rather a long time! 
This is what all the cut up layers look like on top of each other! I quite like it! Not that you will see it like that in the animation, but I do love torn paper! 
I then cut my song down to 30 seconds which is how long the advert must be. I did this using Soundbooth Pro and decided to come in nearer the end of the song with the echo drums and bells starting off, I'm really pleased with the music, it sounds fab and will look great with the finished piece!
