Damon Wayans is quite animated in a new ad for Aquafina called "I Know." In fact, he is literally animated. Rather than go with live action for this commercial, the creative team at Element 79 Partners, Chicago, opted for rotoscope-style animation directed by Christoph Simon of London-based Bermuda Shorts. Of course, one has to ask, given the fact that Element 79 had access to a celebrity, why animate him? "We wanted to create a breakthrough look for Aquafina by using animation," explained Element 79 group creative director/art director Debby Fries. "It really stands out."
The :30 is certainly eye catching, and Wayans—who currently stars on the ABC sitcom My Wife and Kids—is instantly recognizable. Utilizing a palette of grey, black, white and Aquafina’s familiar blue, the spot focuses on Wayans, wearing sunglasses, a white T-shirt, blue vest and grey pants. Cars zoom past as he strolls down a city street, and a smooth, jazzy track—composed by Damian Heartwell of Spank! Music and Sound Design, Chicago and Santa Monica—plays in the background. A street vendor tosses Wayans a bottle of Aquafina. "Yo, Aquafina is pure nothin’. Hey, who knows more about nothin’ than moi? See, I came from nothin’, got nothin’ on my head," says Wayans, referring to his bald dome.
As the spot continues, Wayans is viewed in a variety of set-ups. At one point, he is surroun-ded by floating droplets of water. He punches one of them, bursting it. We also see him peering out of an Aquafina bottle as water rushes from it; and, surrounded by water, being spun around in a circle, with his arms and legs outstretched.
Interspersed throughout the ad are live-action shots of water—as well as Aquafina water bottles—courtesy of director/DP Irv Blitz of bicoastal HSI Productions. "We wanted the product to really stand out and be pure," Fries noted. "Last year, [Aquafina] had done a complete tabletop campaign with Irv Blitz that was amazing. As an art director, I saw that film and said, ‘This is great. Let’s keep what’s working here—this purity, this wonderful water—and add some breakthrough as far as animation and a celebrity.’ "
Back to the spot: "Nothin’ this pure ever crossed my lips before," Wayans declares of the product. A voiceover reinforces the message: "Aquafina promises pure nothing, which is everything you want in water."
The ad ends with a billboard of sorts—a shot of Wayans holding a bottle of water with the words "we promise nothing" written behind him like graffiti.
What’s amazing is how much the animated Wayans looks and moves like the real Wayans. Turns out the agency had limited access to the star—just a couple of hours during a recording session with him in Los Angeles. "We recorded Damon in L.A. and also videotaped him, so we were able to get his mannerisms, his expressions and his voice live," explained Fries.
Then a London-based actor was cast to "play" Wayans, acting out the spot’s action in front of a white screen. "We cast a guy that was [Wayans’] height and weight, and he had the same hair—same lack of hair, I should say. And he had his mannerisms down," Fries recalled. "He could really do Damon."
Simon shot the footage of the faux Wayans with DP Pete Ellmore. Once that live-action footage was edited, "the actual animation process started with rotoscoping this performance frame by frame," according to Simon. "The next step was what we called ‘Damonizing’—changing our guy into Damon. We had to become experts at what looked more like Damon and what did not."
"We were very picky about making sure it really looked like him, because we were paying a lot of money for a celeb, and we wanted people to recognize him," Fries pointed out.
Of course, great detail also was paid to the background animation. "In terms of animation, the first scene was the biggest and most fun," recalled Simon, referring to the street scene. "We built that street layer by layer, adding in traffic and people and shadows. Everything was drawn by hand, but all the coloring happened in Animo, a digital painting system."
Throughout the process—which took between six to eight weeks—the creatives at Element 79 were able to see via the Internet what Simon and the animators at Bermuda Shorts were doing. Fries admitted that the distance—not to mention the time difference—between Chicago and London "made it a little harder, but it was worth it to get Christoph Simon’s style. It’s really different, something I haven’t see in the U.S.," said Fries, noting that the director gave the spot an urban/graffiti feel befitting Wayans’ persona.
FYI: Look for at least one more animated celebrity pitching Aquafina. A spot featuring Michael J. Fox—directed by Darren Vandenburg of Bermuda Shorts—is scheduled to premiere this summer, most likely in June, according to Fries. She thinks the campaign has legs. "I’m hoping that it continues. This is the first round, and we’re going to see how it does," she reported. "But we’re really excited about it because we think it brands the product, and it gives it a distinct voice that separates it from the other waters."
