Fallon, Minneapolis, continues its tradition of creating amazingly artful animated spots for United Airlines with “Mr. Pants” (:30). Directed by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis of Hollywood, Calif.-based Acme Filmworks, the spot depicts a pair of legs–those of a businessman–waking up in the morning and showering, then making his way to the airport. Along the way, he encounters other legs as they do, well, the things that legs do like play soccer, skateboard and walk along city streets.
Whimsical, colorful and fun, “Mr. Pants” illustrates the message that United Airlines offers more legroom than any of the other airlines, and the spot makes its point without getting too literal–we never do see a pair of legs stretched out in an airplane seat. This approach was intentional, according to Fallon group creative director/copywriter Stuart D’Rozario, who said that the agency has been careful not to be too literal with any of its United Airlines spots. “People enjoy watching the spots, and they absorb the message better, we believe, if you don’t hit them over the head with it,” he reasoned.
Tilby and Forbis, Oscar-nominated filmmakers who had previously worked with Fallon on another United Airlines commercial titled “Interview” (another SHOOT Top Spot of the Week), were onboard with that notion. In terms of animation style, the thought on the agency’s part, D’Rozario shared, was that Tilby and Forbis could simply revisit the technique that they employed to create “Interview,” which had them shooting video, then painting over the frames. But Tilby and Forbis had other ideas on how to animate the spot, and they presented the agency team, which also included art director Bob Barrie, with numerous creative suggestions, D’Rozario praised.
WALK THIS WAY
In the end, it was decided that the directors would utilize a fairly simple technique employing Flash animation and Photoshop to animate “Mr. Pants.”
Tilby and Forbis incorporated the use of actual paper into the process, which gave the spot a warm, handmade look and feel. In fact, if you look closely, you can see that a piece of paper scanned into the computer serves as the background for the entire spot. Incidentally, the sheet was torn out of a notebook that Tilby and Forbis had lying around their Calgary studio. “It’s a little bit like handmade paper. It has a lot of dots in it, and you can see the shreds of paper in it,” Forbis said, noting, “We lessened the texture a little bit by reducing the contrast. We didn’t want the texture to be overwhelming.” The paper was also re-tinted for various scenes to offer some variety in look.
Tilby and Forbis also fashioned the legs out of paper and scanned them into the computer, drawing over them in Photoshop with a brush that had an irregular quality to it.
While the animation process was straightforward, the most difficult part of the process was deciding in the initial stages exactly how to depict the leg characters. After all, legs without a torso could appear downright creepy. With that in mind, “One of the things we had to settle on was, is this a regular world where there would be torsos and there just aren’t?” Tilby shared. “Or are these really just leg people?”
It was decided that these were just “leg people” and that gave Tilby and Forbis license to add some fun touches, like, for example, having the main character hail a taxi to the airport with his foot. “If he was just a normal person where you were just seeing the legs, he wouldn’t do that,” Tilby said. “So that was nice to be able to put that joke in there.”
On to the music, which was an integral part of the spot, a playful version of the United Airlines theme song–the George Gershwin classic “Rhapsody in Blue”–specifically scored for “Mr. Pants” by John Trivers and Liz Myers of Trivers/Myers Music, Manhattan Beach, Calif., underlines the animation’s whimsy and humor. “We actually score original versions of “Rhapsody in Blue” for every commercial we do,” D’Rozario noted.
Reflecting on the “Mr. Pants” project, Tilby and Forbis were glad that they got the opportunity to take creative flight with Fallon a second time around. “It was a pleasure to work with people we knew because there is a level of trust there that you don’t have on every job, so that was really great,” Tilby said. “They gave us quite a bit of freedom to do what we wanted.”