In this animation spot produced by FlickerLab, New York, for agency +SmithGifford, Falls Church, Va., (and a Spanish language version for ad shop Elevacion, Washington, D.C.), a moustached museum guard stands at the ready to protect a Virginia Lottery ticket on display. His nemesis, the mischievous Pink Panther, stealthily approaches, sliding across the gallery’s pink walls to camouflage himself from view.
The Panther’s arm then reaches out, grabs the guard’s cap and tosses it across the room, causing the sentry to leave his post. This frees the Panther to abscond with the lotto ticket but doing so sets off an alarm and overhead lights.
Seeking a new hiding place, the Panther jumps onto the lottery ticket–after all the game has a “think pink” theme, not to mention a potential $12,000 payoff. The guard returns with the Pink Panther nowhere in sight. Then the Panther’s paw reaches out from the ticket, snatches the guard’s hat and again flings it across the room. The Panther then makes good his escape. The spot concludes with a tag telling us about the new Virginia Lotto scratch-off game.
The commercial has been running on TV and cinemas in Virginia.
The FlickerLab ensemble of talent included director/creative director Harold Moss, exec producer Tammy Walters, background designers Max Porter and Bryan Cox, storyboard artist Frank Gresham, producer Franklin Zitter, 2D animators Nikolay Nachev, Thomas Smolenski, Alisa Harris and Jessica Milazzo, After Effects animator/compositor Bryan Cox and animatic editor Dan Rosen.
The creative team at +SmithGifford consisted of president/art director Matt Smith, creative director Bruce Gifford, copywriter Drew Magary and producer Dana Cole.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More