Originally published at: Here's how they made those wacky claymation Brisk commercials from the late 90s | Boing Boing
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Back in the late 80’s I was working on TV commercials and somehow the Production Company I did a lot of work for found out I knew how to “do animation”. So I got tapped to “do the animation” for an Ice Cream Sandwich commercial.
All day long they shot the live action parts and it was not until about 5pm when we got to my part, which was a pair of chocolate brownies circling a scoop of ice cream on a plate while “Jaws” music played in the background. The brownies would leap up and “take a bite” out of the ice cream scoop, creating the “ice cream sandwich”.
If you don’t “do animation” this all sounds really exciting, so everyone from the Ad Agency insisted on hanging around to “watch the animation”. After about 15 minutes of watching me work, they all suddenly remembered they had a meeting or something.
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this is catnip to me, I remember the ad campaign well but only the “Rocky” themed ones. being a moderate Sinatra fan, and animation fan, this video was a huge bonus.
here’s Piscopo doing his Sinatra impersonation from before I knew who Sinatra was. and, oh yeah, Eddie Murphy
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The ramp up of weird ads targeted at tweens/teens from the 90’s thru the 00’s is really interesting. It totally parallels/mimics the craziness bubbling up from adult swim and meme/forum culture.
My favorite high weirdness candy ad:
Just for the pure Gregory Peck vibes
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There was also one with Sherman Hemsley, also quite weird! I forgot Bruce Willis was in it.
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At one point, “claymation” was trademarked by the late great Will Vinton (d, 2018). I was pleased by that, because he doesn’t get enough recognition.
I just looked it up and found that the ™ status is “abandoned” as of 2020. I am sad.
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NOT CLAYMATION. Just regular stop-motion animation. Claymation uses modeling clay — specifically plasticine. This is not that. California Raisins and the Nome King in Return to Oz? Claymation. Rankin-Bass specials, Jack Skellington and iced tea commercials? Not Claymation.
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Maybe your brownie manipulations got them hankering for ice cream sandwiches, so they went out for some.
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Shout-out to O.K. Cola (1-800-I-FEEL-OK)’s strange ad campaign(s). Those were the days!
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We’ve sold lots of donated dolls on eBay, though we have no interest in the things. These animation puppets have to be better than any doll. I wonder if doll collectors try to get their hands on them.
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Being from the other side of the pond, I had no prior knowledge of this Piscopo character (or the commercial). Seemed like a nice guy pops to Wikipedia … oh.
The animators, Mackinnon and Saunders are famous for children’s TV programmes over here: Bob the Builder, Twirlywoos, and Moon and Me (which you might have over there because it was filmed in Georgia for tax breaks). Also responsible for feature films including Fantastic Mr. Fox and Mars Attacks.
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