What do you get when you take four college friends with a penchant for animation and toss them into a London flat? Shynola, a London-based animation collective.
Shynola, which is represented for spots and music videos in the U.S. by Oil Factory Films, Hollywood, is not yet well-known stateside, but a recent campaign for Nike should raise their domestic profile. The colorfully animated package of spots promoting Nike’s Presto sneakers was created by Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. Three of the six ads in the series-"Unholy Cumulus," "Brutal Honey" and "Shady Milkman"-have already hit the airwaves.
"Unholy Cumulus" finds a mischievous cloud streaking across the sky in search of a particular house. Once it finds the house, the cloud stops, rains yellow drops on it and lets out a giggle before turning into Nike’s Unholy Cumulus sneaker. In "Brutal Honey," a bee lays in wait for a passerby to shoot a stinger into. After zapping an unsuspecting person, the bee turns into Nike’s Brutal Honey sneaker.
The ads are striking in their simplicity and bold colors. "Unholy Cumulus" features brilliant blues, while "Brutal Honey" is set on a vibrant orange and yellow background. "What Wieden + Kennedy wanted was a very flat, cut-out-looking kind of animation. Very South Park. Very crude," explains Chris Harding, a member of the Shynola team, which also includes animators Richard Kenworthy, Gideon Baws and Jason Groves.
While the animation looks as if it could have been handmade, Harding says the spots were all done with computers. "It’s basically the same software ILM [in San Rafael, Calif.], would be using to make their monsters and spaceships," explains Harding. "The reason we decided to use it is it can do this very crude stuff, but the animation tools are good to use and very intuitive."
Meanwhile, Groves created Internet versions of the spots using Flash. The cloud and bee characters featured in the "Unholy Cumulus" and "Brutal Honey" spots are eye-catching. So, not surprisingly, Harding says they will likely find their way onto T-shirts and possibly other Nike merchandise.
Looking back on the project-they are actually wrapping up the last two spots-the Shynola artisans are thrilled with the way the spots turned out and happy to have satisfied the client as well as the creatives at Wieden + Kennedy.
In the early stages of the project, Harding admits that initially he and his mates were concerned when they learned that creatives from Wieden + Kennedy would be visiting their flat. "It was a little intimidating because we live and work out of our flat, and we didn’t know what they were going to make of it," Harding says, laughing. "We’d lived here for a year, and our living room was a complete mess because we’d recently gotten all this computer equipment, and all the boxes were piled up in the corner. We had no sofa, and we sat on the floor on cushions. When they said they were coming over, we quickly went out to Ikea and bought 800 quid worth of stuff."
So, what did the Wieden + Kennedy creatives think of their place? "They thought it was quite cool really," recalls Harding. "It worked in our favor."
