http://www.vonage.com/

http://prologue.com/index2.html

The animation begins with the orange background seen in Vonage commercials, with a mouth and ear (both with limbs) standing in the center of the screen. The mouth begins talking, "Vonage home phone service sounds good, but do they charge service fees?" As the mouth says service fees, the words pop out of him and float above him on the screen. The Ear says, "No" in large letters. The mouth then asks, "Equipment fees?" The ear says, "Uh, No!" The ear gets pushed back by the massive words this time, as if he's shocked by the idea of no equipment fees. Next he asks, "Shipping fees?" The ear again says, "No!" This time the letters are made up of boxes and once again push the mouth back. The mouth then asks, "Is 'no' all you can say?" The ear pauses and yells, "NO!" with the word No being even bigger, and made up of smaller sized "No" s all clumped together along with the sound of applause. It then shows them standing on top of the statement, "No has never sounded so good." The mouth is grinning while this statement is on the screen. A voiceover then begins talking about the features Vonage comes with, along with text to list off these features. As they are being listed, the mouth and ear look up at the words with excited expressions. The advertisement ends with the Vonage logo.

This whole advertisement is to show how different Vonage is for not charging customers for things that are required to get the phone service. The mouth could be anyone customers mouth asking these questions, perhaps leading the viewer to think that Vonage gets asked these questions a lot.

The Ear character has a smile on him if one looks closely enough. This implies that he knows all of the great things Vonage has to offer, and is happier as a result of it.

As a whole this advertisement is short and simple, but very well done. Without lots of flashy graphics, the viewer can focus directly on what the characters are talking about.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

http://www.imaginaryforces.com/featured/5/498

http://www.themummy.com/

This animation is the intro to The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008).

The movie follows the protagonists as they try to defeat an ancient Chinese emperor who has been resurrected and is trying to raise his immortal army.

Since the film is set in china, the animation makes use of Chinese characters and mythology in showing what to expect from this adventure film. The music of the intro sets the mood for an exciting adventure into the unknown. It begins with a three headed dragon moving its heads around, and from there brush strokes come across the screen and create a Chinese character. It then shows a background of characters scrolling to the side, while fireballs fall from the top of the screen. This background then breaks away and shows two horses running under an expanding red sun. It then shows a silhouette of a man standing in a chariot being pulled by the horses. The shot then moves up into the sky, where a winding black shape twists and coils on and off the screen, which turns into a snake, despite looking like another brush stroke before. The intro then shows a character within some precious stone. The stone shatters, and the camera zooms out to reveal a character that is part of a mountain range as a plane made of more brush strokes flies overhead. The screen is briefly painted over with brush strokes, and then moves to a shot of the camera flying over mountains and the plane flying by the camera. The viewer then spots what seems to be a trail with a group of adventurers on it. The camera moves behind a hill, and then zooms in on the group of adventurers, showing only silhouettes of them like last time. It then goes to a shot of the group crossing a rope bridge over a deep canyon, with the sides of the canyon being made up of brush strokes. The screen briefly goes black and a white brush stroke behinds winding its way towards the upper right of the screen, soon showing itself to be the inside of a cave, with the walls also being brush strokes.

The scene then changes to one of the camera zooming out off of hills with some grass growing on them, but as it zooms out further, this hill is shown to be a yeti that roars (his saliva is, again, brush strokes!) swipes the screen with its claws. The claw mark turns into yet another Chinese character, which then breaks apart and pieces form into what appears to be a dagger. After a momentary pause the dagger flies into the chest of a skeleton surrounded by other daggers that missed it. A brief scene shows other skeletons, and then the camera zooms out and the area where the skeletons were seems to be in a giant canyon that makes up another Chinese character. As the character is shown, the shadow of the three headed dragon from the beginning can be seen flying overhead. The camera then goes back to ground level and moves away to reveal lines upon lines of silhouetted soldiers standing ready for battle. The camera swings to show the front row of soldiers aiming crossbows, and then moves away from the line of soldiers to show silhouettes of combat. The last scene is of a silhouette of a creature that seems to be like a cross between a gorilla and a lizard.

This brush stroke style is used throughout the entire intro, and makes it seem like the world of the film is being created in front of your eyes as the brush strokes move about the screen. From the imaginary forces website, they say that they both shot real paint splatters, and consulted a master calligrapher to ensure they kept their intro feeling authentic. The whole intro sequence feels, to me, like it could have been hand made from how real the brush strokes seem. My favorite moment of the intro is when the hills turn into a yeti, and it roars at the screen. When it roars, drops of pain fly out of its mouth like saliva. This style makes everything seem hand made and flowing. It's both exciting and fun for me to watch this.

The animation uses two main colors, red and white. Red in the beginning when the dragon is shown and when a man rides on a chariot pulled by two horses under the sun. The rest of the intro is mainly set in mountains, and thus the colors remain white, black, and shades of grey for much of the remainder of the intro.

No, Pandas are not wrestling.

Because we are All Connected

Celyn

http://www.ogilvy.com/

http://www.worldwildlife.org/


This ad starts out with a Panda standing in the center of a light blue screen. A Narrator's voice begins saying, "For this little panda to be happy, the tree has to be happy." As he says this, music begins playing that almost sounds as though it should be in an amusement park. In addition, a wheel of colors begins to spread out from underneath the panda as it is moved off screen eating some bamboo. As the narrator mentions the tree, the tree pops up from the ground, with a colorful smiley face on it. This sets the stage for a very light hearted advertisement. The narrator continues, saying, "For the Tree to be happy, the air it breaths has to be happy." As the narrator mentions the air, one sees hills, trees, and clouds with faces blowing air onto the scenery below it. He continues, "If the air it breathes is happy, the climate is happy," which spawns a smiling sun and storm cloud. He then says, "If the climate is happy, then nature is happy." From there, a lighthouse and water with fish springs up from the still growing ring of colors. Finally, the narrator says, "And if nature is happy, people, the way they live and work, and the panda are all happy; but a happy future, is a serious business." As he says all of this, people spring up from the color wheel, and the color wheel finally completes itself, and we see the people standing bedside the panda holding hands.

The scene then zooms out to show the entire wheel, all of its vibrant cartoon scenery still moving and in action. The color wheel circles around the WWF logo. The narrator then finishes by saying, "We work in partnership with governments, corporations, and communities to secure that future; because we're all connected, and that's WWF's business." This statement of how everything is interconnected is a wide reaching one. Governments, corporations, and communities are mentioned. In other words, WWF is working with everything from small towns to entire nations to help make the world better for everyone. This line of thinking means that nobody in their right mind should be against what the WWF stands for. Naturally, there are plenty of people who disagree with the WWF, but the advertisement puts that idea into one's mind.

The color wheel reminds me of the circle of life that is so integral to stories like the Lion King, and how everyone relies on another. Everything in the animation is very simple. This is important because of how quickly the wheel moves. Nothing remains on screen for more than a few seconds, and everything is constantly moving, so being able to quickly process what is on the screen is important, much in the same way it is important to be able to read billboards as you drive past them on highways.

In terms of color usage, note that the color wheel does not stick to a certain palette, but rather it goes through almost every shade of every color one can think of. The colors do not always remain bright and sunny, but there is never a color combination on the wheel that darkens the mood. Instead, it it almost like watching a rainbow with all the colors mixed randomly together. The background remains blue throughout, almost as if to represent a clear sky.

This entire advertisement is a great way of reaching a wide audience. Families with children will be swayed by the cartoon style of it, because the whole thing looks like it could be a commercial for a kid's program on TV or a child's story book. Adults can also understand the seriousness of the situation, without treading into negative feelings. Instead, it shows what a bright and happy place the world could be and that the WWF is trying to accomplish that.