What a curious technique!

[Sewie]

It's nice and christmassy! But I'm baffled by their choice for this elaborate technique; take a look at the making-of below the ad.

[slowtiger]

That's still the same setup as Fleischer used it for some of their shorts ("Little Dutch Mill" etc) in the 1930's. Nice effect.

[Paul Fierlinger]

But is the sum of the parts worth the whole? It's almost as if the two films will always have to be shown together, to make an impression, otherwise most people would not have even noticed what went into it and might shrug the film off as a little saccharine Christmas short without much of a story.

[idragosani]

Reminds me of the Fleischer setup for some of their animated films, like "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor".

[idragosani]

But is the sum of the parts worth the whole? It's almost as if the two films will always have to be shown together, to make an impression, otherwise most people would not have even noticed what went into it and might shrug the film off as a little saccharine Christmas short without much of a story.

Aye, I'd like to see something more substantial made with this technique. It's really nothing new, using ideas that have been around for many decades (except the computer controlled cutter), blending hand-drawn animation and stop-motion.

[Sewie]

I don't think there is anything wrong with this commercial. It's looks very professional and it does what it is supposed to do very well for a Christmas commercial.
What I find very interesting is that this campaign seems to be build on the assumption that the production process is all very traditional, hand-drawn with no (or minimal) computer or digital work. (Though articles keep appearing on the internet that parts of the animation where drawn digitally, like this one)

What fascinates me most is the general assumption seems to be that non digital work somehow has an added value compared to digital.

[slowtiger]

I don't get the hype. This is just an ordinary TV spot, not really to the point, very sloooow, done with precision and a lot of work. Nevertheless cartoonbrew.com and lots of other voices celebrate it as if it were Frodo (ex-Disney 2D animators) against Mordor (Disney sans 2D).

[Paul Fierlinger]

What fascinates me most is the general assumption seems to be that non digital work somehow has an added value compared to digital.

Well, of course anything handmade gives a product the mark of care and exclusivity -- it always has been like that. Somehow I have forgotten this and hadn't realized that this old truism still my be holding sway. Just in time for me to learn, though. We are almost done with Slocum. All the animation is finished and Sandra just has some sixty scenes to paint. Now I know how to market our film: Hand made! Maybe we should start making a two hour documentary on how it was made.

[D.T. Nethery]

What fascinates me most is the general assumption seems to be that non digital work somehow has an added value compared to digital.

Well, of course anything handmade gives a product the mark of care and exclusivity -- it always has been like that. Somehow I have forgotten this and hadn't realized that this old truism still my be holding sway. Just in time for me to learn, though. We are almost done with Slocum. All the animation is finished and Sandra just has some sixty scenes to paint. Now I know how to market our film: Hand made! Maybe we should start making a two hour documentary on how it was made.

Well, you're joking of course, but why not ? Drawn by hand on a tablet or drawn by hand on paper , it's hand-drawn animation. (and I'd be interested in seeing a documentary about how you and Sandra made Slocum !)

And as Sewie mentioned , some of the rough animation of the misc. characters in the John Lewis "Bear and Hare" piece was animated directly in TB with a Cintiq tablet. (lead animator Aaron Blaise, who animated the two main characters , did his animation on paper; although I notice that Aaron has recently started using TVPaint , but not on this job. ) . The animation that was done with Cintiq in TB was then printed out on animation paper for the clean-up artists to work on. All clean-up was done on paper from what I've been told.

In another odd example of adding an extra step to the production process , I had read in one of the Making-of articles that once all the clean-up animation was finished and scanned/vectorized in TB in Orlando, FL , the files were FTP'd to the facility in the U.K. where they then imported the images into FLASH to color the animation, then the images were laser cut out and re-filmed on the stop-motion sets one frame at a time. It surprised me to read the part about using Flash to color the images. The studio in Orlando (Premise) has done sub-contracted work on numerous feature films and has done everything in-studio -- animation, clean-up, scanning , coloring -- so they are certainly capable of it , but for whatever reasons the main production company on the John Lewis spot did not have Premise do the coloring . (maybe it was a scheduling issue ? The hand-drawn animation was over 4000 drawings produced in about 8 weeks from what I've read in the Making-of articles. )

[Paul Fierlinger]

Yes, we could have someone shoot the documentary and show just our hands drawing invisible drawings on the tablet, and only if TVPaint paid for the documentary, would we raise the camera to show the drawings actually appearing on our screens!