Here’s a compilation of some of our favorite past work. Enjoy!

Music by Hard Mix – Memories (Purity Ring Re-work)

Using cel and 3D animation, we created a “How To” video for Toyota’s new interactive bar code campaign, ToyoTag. With co-director/illustrator Ken Gunn Lee at the design helm, we brought this fun piece to life with tons of characters including a Sasquatch, Echo Park hipsters in skinny jeans, and a grandmother who still thinks flip phones are in.

We had the great pleasure of working with director Kinka Usher and DP John Toll for U.S. Cellular’s updated “be happy” campaign. We transitioned USC from their previous look, centered on graphic branding elements, into a live-action/CG-focused world. In addition to on-set supervision, we were responsible for all the design and animation for these ads.

“Treehouse” was one in a series of spots we completed this summer that provided us a continuous list of technical challenges. In addition, we needed to figure out how to create appeal to a wide range of audiences. We were asked to design a treehouse having elements that could speak to all ages of kids, from the imagination of a young child to the skateboard & rock band loving tween.

Luckily, every once in a while, we get the chance to use the silly portion of our brains! Part of a campaign showcasing Yahoo!’s new email features, we created this energetic cel-animated piece showing a college student reminiscing about her childhood with her #1 dad. Artwork of illustrator Nick Arciaga, and inspiration from what a student might doodle in class; this is a fast-paced spot filled to the brim with funny details.

Shot in downtown L.A.’s Olvera Street, this spot was featured in U.S. Cellular’s Spring campaign. Despite the short post-production timeline, it was a fun task to mix in a bit of character animation with U.S. Cellular’s graphical elements.

More from the “be happy” campaign.

Being from L.A., we know what it’s like to get robbed at the gas pump. So when we were asked to create flying $ particles that come back and fill the pocket of our “Family Man,” we knew we’d have no problem finding inspiration.

In this vignette, the challenge was breathing life and character into rigid and inanimate phones and figuring out how to seamlessly reveal all the random obstacles. Combined with some clever sound design and a last minute dye job, this spot came off without a hitch.

Our friends at Saatchi & Saatchi LA asked us to create a short video explaining Toyota’s new Shopping Tool App for your phone. To show off all of the features we decided to take a field trip out of the studio and run our own live-action shoot. Hand models, phone rigs, and tasty craft services, this was a nice break from our desks. To overcome the obstacle of a short timeline and tight budget, we chose to shoot high res stop-motion turnarounds of the phones, rather than the usual 3D pipeline. This created some interesting animation constraints but really enhanced the overall look of the piece.

This all-animated spot is about getting a jump start on holiday gift-giving. With so many providers using the Android in their spots, it was exciting for us to team up with the guys at Publicis & Hal Riney to invent a funny scenario for him (or her?) to clumsily fly around in. Our inspiration came from an underfunded school play set that mom and dad helped build.

In a world ruled by texting, Blackberry set off to show how their BBM keeps people connected. We partnered up with Blacklist directors Zoe Wishart and our good friends Nanospore to animate this suprisingly technical 7-city electronic billboard campaign.

The good people of Dallas, Toronto, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York were able to see these animated spots on billboards and buildings throughout their cities.

Teaming up with fellow Art Center grads Nanospore to work on Royal
Elastic’s seasonal campaign “FreshTech”, our ambitious Creative Director Sean Starkweather helped develop the design and was responsible for nearly all of the 3D animation and compositing in this action-packed 30-second spot.

As conceived by director Paul Hwang, the FreshTech shoe is the love child of our two main characters NATURE and TECHNOLOGY.

Nosaj Thing added his awesome sound design to aid in the storytelling.

In the midst of opening SDF/1, we helped Nanospore produce this pro-bono short for Motionographer’s 2009 F5 RE:PLAY Film Festival. The theme of the showcase was rejuvenation, regrowth, rebirth and/or revival. Inspired by these ideas, Sean, with Nanospore’s Paul Hwang, developed different ways for the faces to morph on from the inside out. Ultimately, the goal was to make viewers uncomfortably weirded out.