CHICAGO — Re:Think Studios (www.rethinkpost.com) completed new holiday spots for Philips Norelco that revive the company’s stop-motion campaign from the early 1990s. The :30 and :15 commercials promote Philips Norelco’s SensoTouch 3D rechargeable electric razor and feature an animated Santa riding the razor over snow-covered hills.
The commercials were originally conceived to serve as an interactive campaign, but the client decided to use then in their 2011 holiday broadcast schedule.
Walton Isaacson senior creative Andrew Holton and designer Diana Litavsky, along with freelance producer Nathan Brown of Nathan Brown Productions contracted Re:Think Studios to modernize the former campaign. Re:Think CD Brian Bullock says the goal was to respect the look and feel of the classic campaign, particularly the physical camera and the artistic quality of the stop-motion models.
BixPix Entertainment in Burbank, CA, fabricated the sets and a cast of characters. Bix Pix’s Drew Hodges directed and animated all the stop motion in their Burbank studio, and then zipped the files to Re:Think where the studio went to work on modeling and animating the 3D razor, creating the matte paintings for backgrounds, and fashioning elements that would help bring the scenes to life. Re:Think also handled editing, compositing and lighting the final piece.
Re:Think founder Jessica Simmon performed the edited and assembled the final composite. The studio relied on Photoshop to create elements for the matte paintings and After Effects for compositing. Avid DS was used for editorial, final compositing and top-layer color. 3D modeling and animation was performed using Autodesk Maya, and Luxology’s Modo was used for rendering.
Another Country provided original sound design.