They may be the "orangest" ads on television. What you hear are fairly conventional, person-on-the-street testimonials for Internet service provider EarthLink, but what you see is a world of orange, in which people are sketched out in black lines that bounce, shimmer, and even dance to express what they’re saying.
The two spots were animated by Class-Key Chew-Po Commercials, Hollywood, which is a division of Klasky Csupo, also in Hollywood, based on hand-held digital footage directed by Leslie Dektor of Dektor Film, Los Angeles, for EarthLink via TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles.
The orange-and-black talking heads are the latest examples of the innovative work that has earned Class-Key Chew-Po an eminent place in animation. Klasky Csupo is the animation firm behind the early episodes of The Simpsons, and the shop created the Nickelodeon series Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys. Klasky Csupo launched its commercial division in 1995. In ’98, the division changed its moniker to Class-Key Chew-Po Commercials, seeking to distinguish itself from the parent company. John Andrews, former VP of animation at MTV, was brought in as executive producer, responsible for development and marketing, along with Liz Seidman, who is also an executive producer, overseeing production. Additionally, Class-key Chew-Po added a slew of new animation directors to its roster. Since then, Class-Key Chew-Po has animated a wide range of spots, for clients such as Cocoa Puffs, Chuck E. Cheese, Kraft, Burger King, the Mercury Villager, Levi’s Dockers, Head & Shoulders, and McDonald’s. The division’s latest work for EarthLink has generated a considerable amount of buzz.
The first spot in the EarthLink package, "The Real Internet," features excerpts from interviews with 10 Internet users. Each person is talking about what it’s like to use the Internet, and what makes EarthLink’s service the best. Their animated figures change as they talk; for example, when one woman says "[EarthLink] is not about steering you this way or that," two little creatures appear on her shoulders and begin pulling her head back and forth by her hair. As a wild-haired man says, "When I’m curious about a ballet shoe style … I don’t want, for the rest of my life, to be hearing about products for ballet dancers," strands of his hair pop out and begin dancing like ballerinas. Toward the end of the spot, the words "EarthLink. The number one provider of the real Internet" appear on (what else?) an orange screen, and the final frame shows the company’s ringed-planet logo with the phrase, "Get Linked."
The second spot, "Jim," was an unexpected outgrowth of the first. According to Rich Siegel, creative director/copywriter, and John Shirley, creative director/art director on the EarthLink account at TBWA/Chiat/ Day, one of the people interviewed for "The Real Internet" was so compelling that they decided to create a separate spot around him. In the same animation style, it features the bespectacled man riffing on how he likes to use the Internet—fast—and how EarthLink DSL allows him to do it.
The way Andrews tells it, the spots were products of a creative pile-on. Initially, when TBWA/ Chiat/Day showed an interest in the idea of creating animation out of live-action interviews, Andrews called on director Bob Sabiston, who animates ads through Class-Key Chew-Po on a freelance basis, to direct it using his own rotoscoping software. When Andrews was at MTV, he had worked with Sabiston to create some interstitial promos in which live-action interviews were animated. But Sabiston was working on a feature film, Waking Life, directed by Richard Linklater, with a tight deadline, and had to take a pass on the EarthLink ads, although he did act as a consultant on the spots.
At that point Leslie Dektor’s live-action portion had already been shot, so Andrews decided to use another director to take on the animation. He turned to Bil White, who had formally joined Class-Key Chew-Po in the fall of 2000 after extensive freelancing, to see if he could do a similar kind of rotoscoping. White—whose other Class-Key Chew-Po credits include Hasbro’s Furby Kids’ "Furby’s Like Me" via Posnick & Kolker, New York, and the Rugrats in Paris Sweepstakes, which was done in-house for Nickelodeon—was game to try it. John Haugse, another director at the firm, also contributed to the animation on the ad, using the Corel Painter. White worked with five other animators, as well—Dave Foss, Ariel Martian, Seth Strong, Peter Doan, and John Schnepp—to create the animation, using Adobe After Effects. Paul Vester acted as creative director on the project.
"That spot, ‘The Real Internet,’ had to be turned around in a very, very short time, and basically, this whole gang just jumped on it," Andrews recalls. "It’s writhing with creativity and a lot of different directors’ styles."
Siegel and Shirley of TBWA/ Chiat/Day explain that the original concept for the spots was to capture the spirit of the print campaign that EarthLink was running. "That campaign came from a guerilla media standpoint," says Shirley. "It kind of looked like these ads came from someone in a basement pulling them out on a silkscreen."
To Siegel and Shirley, animation was the "cleanest, most direct way" to bring the "honesty" of the print campaign to television. Still, the animation needed live action for its foundation. That’s where Leslie Dektor came in. Siegel and Shirley note that they had always held the director in high esteem, but Dektor had never gone for one of their boards. Similarly, they liked what Class-Key Chew-Po was doing, but had never had the right project for them.
Siegel and Shirley had high praise for the way everyone involved in the spots worked in harmony. "There were a lot of very subjective things the agency wanted, and they were great at meeting all the demands," says Siegel of Class-Key Chew-Po. Siegel and Shirley also give a great deal of credit to the trio of young creatives on the project: art directors Chuck Monn and Margaret Midgett, and copywriter Jeff Maki. "They hadn’t learned about all the rules yet, so they didn’t have any," remarks Shirley. "They went in and did stuff that a lot of seasoned creatives possibly wouldn’t have thought of."
Class-Key Chew-Po is able to benefit from the facilities and resources of parent feature/TV studio Klasky Csupo. Although several directors are in-house all the time, with ongoing work either in the studio or in commercials, Class-Key Chew-Po has also assembled a crew of directors who are exclusively represented by the division, while working on outside projects for television, movies, and the Web.
One of these directors is the mono-monikered Voltaire, whose signature style of stop-motion animation and live-action direction was recently featured in Pop Tart’s Pastry Swirls’ "Dance," out of Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, and Toybiz’s "Spider Stomping" via Berenter Greenhouse & Webster, New York. In addition to his commercial work, Voltaire has created several short films that have been featured in numerous animation festivals. Director Stig Bergqvist also recently worked on an ad for Head & Shoulders, called "Jittery Julian," out of Saatchi & Saatchi, London.
As Andrews and Seidman point out, the arrangement of having available for commercials directors who also have outside projects is good for Class-Key Chew-Po both economically—because of the ebb and flow of commercial work—and creatively, since it diversifies the animation they produce. "There’s rarely just one pure technique that’s used in creating a spot," comments Seidman. "It seems that the lines are really blurring between traditional and new, mixed media techniques."
If the EarthLink spots are any guide, the lines aren’t just blurring—they’re wiggling, morphing and exploding into what Rich Siegel calls "the cool zone," which seems to be comfortable territory for Class-Key Chew-Po.g
