Cold Hard Flash: Flash Animation News, Videos and Links » Esurance

Special Agent Productions and Ghostbot Service Esurance

aaron — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:02:45 +0000

In the wake of the W!LDBRAIN office closing, Phil Robinson and his new company Special Agent Productions have gotten off to a strong start up in San Francisco. Along with co-founder Amy Capen, Robinson has been hard at work on the Flash-animated Esurance campaign, which has been all over the ol’ telly these days. Here’s the most recent spot, titled Hidden Camera, which was produced in conjunction with Ghostbot.

Erin 3surance Boards Star Trek

aaron — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:15:11 +0000

Auto insurer Esurance got on board the Star Trek movie promotion mission, and in doing so they’ve redesigned pink-haired Erin Esurance. She’s been taken into the 3rd dimension… or 3D. She originally found popularity in her Flash-animated 2D form, and we can only wonder if she’s been beamed out of our universe forever. Go to the Star Trek website to vote for your favorite design.

Thanks to Rob Fendler for the story tip.

Erin Esurance Puts a Premium on Earth Hour Message

aaron — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:26:07 +0000

In this :30, Flash-animated PSA below, Erin Esurance reminds us all to go “lights out” at 8:30pm tomorrow for Earth Hour. The worldwide event was initiated by the WWF, with the concept that leaving your lights on is a vote for global warming.

Erin Esurance Carves Up the Competition

aaron — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:18:11 +0000

While the Esurance team may be distracted by their recent coupling with the upcoming Star Trek movie, they haven’t stopped pumping out adventures for pink-haired Erin Esurance. This latest ad, titled Mission Savings, takes Erin to the slopes – on skis. We were pretty certain she favored snow boarding, but she’s apparently fond of both. The animation is overseen by Wildbrain, and produced by Ghostbot.

Erin Esurance Body Slams High Prices

aaron — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:41:52 +0000

If you’ve been obsessively watching TV these past few days, transfixed on this election coverage, you may have seen the new Erin Esurance TV spot – Auto Insurance Face-Off. Erin, who is voiced by Mo Mellady, squares off against some rowdy wrestlers in the new ad for the auto insurer. Phil Robinson at W!ldbrain directed, while Ghostbot handled the Flash animation.

Esurance Customer Kate

aaron — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:23:55 +0000

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.

Esurance Brings PWRFL Power to New Ad

aaron — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:26:37 +0000

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.

Annie Awards Celebrate El Tigre and Flash Animation

aaron — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:24:11 +0000

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:

Monica Kennedy for Character Animation in a Television Production
Shawn Patterson for Music in an Animated Television Production

Below is one of the El Tigre clips Patterson submitted for the awards. Its from episode 9, titled Yellow Pantera.

Sadly, it looks like this award-winning show will be ending this year, but it will surely go out on a high-note. Nickelodeon hasn’t picked up the second season, and as Patterson put it on his MySpace page “all great things come to an end.”In the Best Animated Television Commercial category, Acme Filmworks’ Powershares spot, titled Escape Average, took top honors. This weekend, I asked Dave Wasson, the director of the commercial, about the ceremony and production experience:

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.

[MEDIA=17]
Alongside John Canemaker and Glen Keane, John Kricfalusi accepted his Winsor McCay Award, which honors “career contributions to the art of animation.” John K’s The Ren and Stimpy Show was credited with “reinvigorated television animation,” but he was also noted for his pioneering work on the internet’s first cartoon series – The Goddamn George Liquor Program, which was animated entirely in Flash.

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)

Esurance Customer Drives to Toon Town

aaron — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:40:00 +0000

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.

Trussell Directs Esurance B-Movie

aaron — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:36:00 +0000

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.