As we’ve all helplessly watched the Myanmar tragedy unfold, British ad agency SHOP recently tapped the director trio known as PAM and London-based studio FINISH to bring a TV spot for Christian Aid Week to life. The designs for the ad were illustrated by EBOY in Photoshop, and then animated by Richard Mitchelson in Flash. Flame artist Jason Watts then composited the final piece. When you’re done watching, head over to the Christian Aid site to donate, or give a few bucks to the World Food Program.

Allison Craig recently added her animation talents to a Nesquik campaign. As she pointed out on her blog, Allison animated the Nesquik rabbit and Jan Naylor did the clean-up - all in Flash. The spot is a promotion for the Where Does Nesquik Take You? contest.

And they also lent their skills to this subway tunnel campaign below. These are typically done with a series of computer controlled LED screens positioned at even distances along a subway tunnel.

For the launch of the multi-platform video game Condemned 2, Sega turned to director Julian Stokoe at Yukfoo Animation to bring their viral campaign to life. Stokoe, along with Clemenger BBDO Sydney Australia directed 3 Flash-animated shorts that play counter to the gory visuals inside the game. Mukpuddy produced the animation. Here’s Pony Heart Quest:

Watch the other two - Lollipop Gift Parade and Clown Flower Time.

Since being featured here back in July of 2007, Anik Rosenblum has been working with Global Mechanic. Rosenblum’s first job was a spec ad for Durex, titled Feeling, which features fast-moving, loose brush strokes against a remix of Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody to Love (oddly one of two mentions of this band today).

A teamed led by director Frank Drucker recently created a couple of animated commercials for Huggies, the disposable diaper. The two Flash-animated spots are for the Huggies Cleanteam products, and the project was produced by IBC Digital and Edgeworx. The music video, titled Reporting For Dirty, is currently playing in theaters in front of Horton Hears a Who and other family entertainment films.

The animation team features a handful of New York’s finest, including Mike Carlo, Dagan Moriarty, Matthew I. Jenkins, Sal Iovine, Soonmin Chung, Thomas Smolenski and Dan Forgione who also headed up the animation team.

Steve Scott is a sought-after London-based animation director and illustrator. It should be mentioned that he’s also got an amazing band [cue jealousy] called Telemetry Orchestra. We’ve featured his work here before back in 2006, and he’s been putting his copy of Flash to work on a new promotional clip for the UK’s Channel 4. Scott teamed up with illustrator Will Sweeney on this piece, which announces the Nokia Green Room.

Roger, based in downtown LA, recently added their motion graphics mojo to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards (tomorrow night 8pm) promos which star returning host Jack Black. Roger partnered up with Pick of Destiny writer/director Liam Lynch on this comedic AD/DC homage below, which includes seamlessly composited live-action, 3D animation, hand-drawn and Flash-animated work. Stick around for an interview after the video….

AARON SIMPSON: What was the overall design concept for the promotional pieces?

TEAM ROGER: The design concept came from this year’s KCA slogan of When Hollywood meets slime! We took iconic Hollywood elements and tried to represent what would happen if the Nickelodeon brand crashed into them. We knew we wanted something gooey and organic that would fit well with Nickelodeon’s style.

Liam Lynch (Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic) directed the live action shoot. He provided a rough animatic which a had a general direction for the storyline. From there, we begin designing panoramic storyboards of the cityscape and main environments. After editing the footage, we designed storyboards full of details of the execution of every shot. Next we created an animatic that included audio, footage, and storyboards. Finally, we put our animation team into full production.

AARON: Which artists created the look?

TEAM ROGER: The look was created in a collaborative effort between Nickelodeon, Liam Lynch and Roger. Our design team included Brian Gossett (lead designer) and Jake Portman (Art Director) as well as the (3) Creative Directors of Roger, lead by Terence Lee.

AARON: How was Flash a part of the production pipeline?

TEAM ROGER: Flash was used to animate specific elements we wanted to have a hand drawn feel.

AARON: Which elements of the spots were created in Flash?

TEAM ROGER: The Flash animations include the Splat type as Jack jumps out of the plane in the first shot, the letters Jack is Back throughout the motorcycle scene, and the birds circling Jack’s head on the end shot.

AARON: Did artists draw directly into the program, or were pencil sketches scanned into the software?

TEAM ROGER: For the Splat animation, we first created the type in Illustrator and worked backwards, re-drawing each frame with the onionskin feature until each letter was complete. In the point of the animation where the type turns into one big glob, we drew each frame in individually until it fell off frame.

AARON: We used the same technique for the Jack is Back letters: starting with vector type and re-drawing each frame with the onionskin feature.

TEAM ROGER: The birds began with a simple 3d bird animation as a guide. After illustrating the bird, we did a quick pencil sketch of the body and head then moved to the wing movements. From there we cleaned up the bird and drew it in frame by frame using a Wacom tablet.

PROJECT CREDITS:

Client: Nickelodeon
VP/Creative Director, On Air and Movie Promotions: Jay Schmalholz
Director of Production, On Air Promotions: Christina Augustinos
Supervising Producer, On Air Promotions: Mike Tricario

Production Company: Ignition Films
Live Action Director: Liam Lynch

Animation/Design Production: Roger
Creative Directors: Terence Lee, Vasil Hnatiuk, Mark Yamamoto
Art Director: Jake Portman
Lead Designer: Brian Gossett
Compositor: Erin Bosworth
Animators: Zack Nederlander, David Lewandowski, Jose Acosta
Lead Flash Animator: Kenneth Macy
Executive Producer: Sarah Cole
Producer: Elaina Porter
Sound design & Mix: Mike Barrett from Creative Bubble