The latest Esurance TV spot features another real customer. Kate Kessler, a mother who drives a 1998 Civic Coupe, is the focus of this commercial, which was animated at W!LDBRAIN.
Think you should be in an Esurance ad? Submit your video to Esurance and tell them why.
If this Esurance commercial doesn’t immediately make sense, you’re not alone. The singer/songwriter Kazutaka Nomura won a chance to be in the TV spot at the 2007 Capitol Hill Block Party Block Star contest in Seattle, and his music drives the most unusual Esurance commercial to date - titled PWRFL Power, which is Nomura’s stage name.
This past Friday, my wife and I attended the 35th Annual Annie Awards, which were held on the UCLA campus for the first time. As you may have read here a few months back, it was a proud night for Flash animation.
The big winner at Royce Hall was undeniably Pixar’s feature film Ratatouille - which wrapped up 10 awards. On the TV side, two series took home a pair of trophies - Robot Chicken and Nickelodeon’s Flash-animated series El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. The show, which was created by Jorge Gutierrez and his wife Sandra Equihua, walked away with awards for Best Animated Television Production for Children and Character Design in an Animated Television Production, a category Gutierrez was nominated for two years ago. Congrats to Dave Thomas, Tim Yoon, Gabe Swarr, Roman Laney and the crews at Boulder Media and Six Point Harness. [read Cold Hard Flash interviews with Gutierrez and Yoon]
El Tigre was also nominated in two other categories:
Below is one of the El Tigre clips Patterson submitted for the awards. Its from episode 9, titled Yellow Pantera.
When Patrick Warburton announced that our Powershares spot had won I was completely caught off guard. At past Annie Awards, I’d been nominated quite a few times, but had ever won. So I had sort of given up on the idea of taking home a trophy. I tried to get Ron Diamond and Gwynn Adik to join me on stage but they wouldn’t budge (they’d decide to give me “my moment in the sun”). I hadn’t written anything down so I gave a short, rambling thank you speech and staggered off stage.
The schedule on this spot was crazy; three weeks total from the time I got the outline from the agency until the day we delivered the finished spot. That said, of all of the projects I’ve directed, it was actually one of the most fun. I really clicked with the agency creatives right from the start, and they were completely open to me taking their idea and running with it (incidentally, in case any agency executives are reading this, this is the best recipe for good commercials - I’m just sayin’). Dave Knott and I completed the storyboard in two days. The following day I made the animatic. Using Flash I was able to create the character designs and backgrounds in record time.
Even though our crew was small, they were super talented, which made it all the more enjoyable. I contacted Brendan Burch at Six Point Harness Studios and he hooked us up with a couple of his best guys. Saharat Tantivaranyoo did a beautiful job with the character layouts, and James Krenske’s animation is kick ass! Back at Acme Filmworks, I worked with Nic Mermet on After Effects to composite all the elements together and add all of the multi-plane parallax. All in all, it was really a great experience.
[Watch Wasson's Powershares commercial here at Cold Hard Flash]
Back at the Annie Awards, Flash animation continued to echo throughout the night. The creators of Flash, Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi, were honored with the Ub Iwerks Award, which highlights excellence in technical achievement. I won’t go into much more detail on this, as a we’ll be posting a lengthy interview with all three guys tomorrow.
But in the meantime, here’s a clip that played just prior to their award. It’s a collage of various Flash-animated projects from the last 10 years. Antran Manoogian, the president of ASIFA-Hollywood, asked me to assemble the clip, and I was happy to oblige. It’s simply a hint at all of the great Flash animation out there - we surely left out some incredible projects. Thanks to Antran for the invitation, and to Les Perkins for helping me put this together.
There were also a handful of nominees on Friday representing Flash-animated projects:
BEST ANIMATED SHORT SUBJECT
Chip Wass’ short Mascot Prep – part of Disney’s Shorty McShorts’ Shorts project - animated at Boulder Media
ANIMATION PRODUCTION ARTIST
Natasha Liberman – Growing Up Creepie - Discovery Kids
BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION COMMERCIAL
Esurance Homeowners spot – W!LDBRAIN
BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION PRODUCTION FOR CHILDREN
Little Einsteins – Disney Channel
Peep and the Big Wide World – Discovery Kids
Lastly, I’d like to congratulate my cousin, Elizabeth Harvatine, for her nomination in the Character Animation in a Television Production category. She was honored for her stop-motion animation on Adult Swim’s Morel Orel, and her pal Eric Towner took home the trophy for his work on another stop-motion project - Robot Chicken. (inset photo credit - Tennessee Reid Norton)
Paul Mackinaw, an Esurance customer since January 2002, was in attendance last year at a silent auction fundraiser for the San Francisco Urban Services YMCA. After besting his competitors in a bidding war, Mackinaw had won an opportunity to “play a villian” (via voiceover) in an upcoming Esurance TV spot - promoted as a $300 value. But for Mackinaw the opportunity turned into something priceless . According to Kristin Brewe, Esurance’s Director of Brand & Public Relations, when her team discovered that Paul “was an Esurance customer from very early on, and saw how articulate and engaging he was, we decided to offer him a starring role with Erin Esurance.” Mackinaw wound up on-camera in two Flash-animated TV spots - Paul Gets Animated and Paul Saves Some Green. For more on his experience, check out the microsite.
Here is Paul Saves Some Green.
The long-running, Flash-animated ad campaign for Esurance has added another director to the roster. W!LDBRAIN, the San Francisco-based animation studio, tapped Joel Trussell to oversee the animation of Erin Esurance’s latest adventure - B-Movie-Attack of the Over-Priced Auto Insurance Monster.
Proving that much of the viewing public is perfectly fine receiving entertainment in the form of an advertisement, Special Agent Erin Esurance is back in another long-form TV spot. This short, titled Carbon Copy, was produced by Wildbrain, directed by Phil Robinson and animated by Ghostbot. This beautifully animated commercial is over 3 minutes long, and it saves the subtle sales pitch for the very end.
Thanks to Pierre in the Cold Hard Flash message boards for the tip.
Back in September, 
CHF ran a story about Renegade Animation’s work for CBS’ Innertube. This broadband network is pushing a new Flash-animated series called ‘Animate This!,’ which features CBS stars telling stories which are subsequently brought to life with animation.
Renegade’s latest stars Jennifer Love Hewitt fondly remembering her singing debut at a state fair.
Notice how the series is 
sponsored by the Flash-animated commercial series from Esurance. These spots are beautifully animated by the gang at Ghostbot, and produced by Wildbrain. On that same topic, check out their latest work, a spot called ‘Basher-Bowl,’ which the Ghostbot gang call “arguably (the) most action packed Esurance spot we’ve done…” You can see it over at the Ghostbot site now, and on their blog, they’ve posted some thoughts on the production.
