Getting The Job
This simple 2-frame animation project began with a phone call to me from Darren Jaffe, production coordinator at the Los Angeles branch of Brand New School (Jens Gehlhaar was the creative director on this project, but most of his direction was filtered to me through Darren). Brand New School is an award-winning studio with offices in Los Angeles and New York that works in all areas of commercial art—their main focus is in the directing and production of TV commercials.

Darren explained in our phone conversation that he had found my web site while searching the web for reference material for a new commercial they were doing for Emirates airline. The point of the commercial was to play up the fact that Emirates serves fine food and wine on all its flights and in all seating classes. To illustrate the "fine wine" aspect they wanted to make a simple 2-frame animation showing Dom Pérignon, a Benedictine monk credited with developing the method of making champagne, giving a friendly toast to the viewer.

The animation would require only two drawings, and Jens wanted them drawn in a wood-engraving style. He thought an engraving look would help capture the feel of old-world quality and the feel of Pérignon's lifetime in the early 1700's. After Jens and Darren viewed my online portfolio, they decided that my scratchboard-to-look-like-a-wood-engraving style would work perfectly for this project.

The first drawing for the animation would show the bust of the monk turned toward the viewer but with his head turned slightly to the left and looking away from the viewer. His facial expression would be as with someone in contemplation. The second drawing would show the monk with his head and eyes turned to look directly at the viewer, with a subtle smile of satisfaction, and with his hand raising a glass of champagne towards his mouth, as in a toast.

After explaining what he needed from me, Darren asked me to submit a timeframe for completing the drawings along with a fee estimate. I submitted this information within the same day, and both my timeframe and fee were accepted. With the business aspect of the project settled, Darren began feeding me information and reference material for doing the drawings.

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Note:
Brand New School referred to this project as a 2-frame animation, but in actuality, it was a 2-second animation that required two images. The finished animation lasted about two seconds, and at the standard video frame rate of 29.97 frames per second, it had about 60 frames.