Nike 'Punching Bag'

This is a scratch composite of the linetest cuts for what we referred to during production as "Punching Bag", one of three animated commercials that Fates built for Curious Pictures and Nike at the end of 2008. I was the key animator, my partner Craig Olsson was my tweens man, and together we fight crime!!

Also we make cartoons. Check out the finished version of this commercial at Fates.com

It took a lot of hours, but I was pretty happy with the way the lines came out. Not everything was perfect, but I liked what we did right. Past this point it left my department and went on to shadows, paint and composite, so this represents the last stage at which I was really involved at a creative level.

We were given a set of rough boards by the commercial director, and from that we did a series of animatics based on the key layouts, essentially animated thumbnails but still required to evoke a sense of the final intention. After that got approved we were off to the races. To stay on schedule we had to complete the line animation in about 7-10 days (for about 20 seconds of final runtime). I have no idea if that's a lot or not, all I know is I didn't sleep much.

"Lines Test" means the line quality is representative of the final draft. Prior to the lines test we do animatics and keys tests (where key frames are cleaned up and rough tweens/breakdowns are inserted). This particular piece allowed for a very rough, sketchy finish to the linework that was a little faster to draw.

"Scratch timing" means the timing is not locked yet, and so there's some leeway for the occasional stutter or hold, and it's possible that a director might require a cut to be extended or diced. Though since this is a lines test, it's also pretty close to what the final timing should be. The markup is also still in place, timing notes and frame numbers and so forth, those get removed in the final composite passes. As the key animator, it's my responsibility to determine the timing of the animation and direct my partners as to how many tweens to draw, and to some degree where they should go or how they should differ from a straight tween.

So if you don't like the motion or the timing or the style in this, I'm your huckleberry.





©2009 Studio Fates & Nike. Check out nikewomen.com and you can see the ad campaign, including the final commercials. Dig around the interwebs for the Nike Women ads or the Sister One shoes, and I bet you'll find 'em in nice QT versions as well.

Feel free to ask any question you like, but be aware that I'm restricted from talking about certain specifics. Sucks, but so it goes.