Tuesday, January 24, 2012

On the Digital Drawing Board - Intel Corporation

After a long hiatus from the blog, (lots of work as well as a couple of fairly major holidays),  it's time to catch up a bit.

One of the more significant and time-consuming projects that graced my door recently was an animated commercial and video for Intel Corporation. (It wrapped up last month, though I wasn't able to share any art until the commercial and video were released.)

The purpose of the animation is to highlight the new technologies that Intel is introducing; primarily touch screen-based systems in retail stores, restaurants, schools, hospitals and public transportation centers.

I was hired to be part of a creative team, which included a writer and an animator. I was first asked design the characters and background scenes. (This was a competition of sorts with a cartoonist in New York, and don't ask me how, but in the end the folks at Intel chose my characters and artwork.)

The next step was to draw all of the character and scenery illustrations to be used in the animation. Also needed were individual mouth and eye movements for the main characters, to allow them to speak and appear 'alive'. The video ended up running over 6 minutes, which for anyone who is familiar with animation well knows, that was a lot of illustration.

I've seen the finished animation as a video, and although I cannot post it here yet, I think the voice actors did a great job.

Here are a few scenes and characters...

(click to zoom illustrations)

The action takes place as Bob travels through the city in his car...his guide is Michael Caine!













I'll be back shortly to share some other things on the board recently, including illustrations for a new children's book and a world map for Erickson Air Crane, a helicopter manufacturer... Meanwhile, be well and best wishes for the New Year.