Crush, Toronto and Random House Canada have come together to create nine clips to promote Douglas Coupland’s latest novel The Gum Thief.
This project, which brings selections of the novel to life in creative short clips, is the first of its kind for both Random House Canada and Crush.
Three of the clips have just been released on YouTube. The remaining six clips will be released over the course of this month.
The narration, on all nine clips, is by Douglas Coupland himself.

General note from Crush, Toronto:
Back in the summer, we talked to our good friends at Random House Canada, about doing something for Doug Coupland's new book. Didn't know what, just, something. We had done some work before for Souvenir of Canada, a pop-culture biographical rumination on well, you have to see it, and should really. Back to The Gum Thief. We wanted to do a series of short pieces, which would then find their way out into the world the way all things do now. There are three series, featuring passages from the novel. Roger and Bethany are the two main characters in the novel, and Glove Pond is the novel within the novel. We shot in an unspecified office supplies store, taught ourselves how to animate piles of staples and took a crash course in mid century advertising. Doug Coupland does the narration for all of them and Dave deCarlo from Sons and Daughters helped us out with sound design.

Additional comment from Crush’s managing director/creative director, Gary Thomas:
First off, we loved the book and we all love Doug’s work. We felt that the nature of the narrative lent itself to a less traditional form, and we thought Doug’s readers would be visually sophisticated and net savvy enough to appreciate this approach. We wanted the three strands to have a unique look, but when viewed as a group would feel coherent. Our designers, Stefan Woronko, Adrian Lawrence, Chris Rolf and Greg Dunlop each used a wide variety of techniques, and brought their varied design aesthetics to their pieces.

The Gum Thief is a story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply superstore.
More on Douglas Coupland here http://www.douglascoupland.ca/
Credits:
Title: Roger: Part 1
Client: Random House Canada / The Gum Thief
Creative Director: Gary Thomas
Producer: Patty Bradley
Director: Gary Thomas
Online/compositing: Greg Dunlop
Production Company: Crush, Toronto
Sound Design: Dave deCarlo
Random House: Sharon Klein

Title: Bethany: Part 1
Client: Random House Canada / The Gum Thief
Creative Director: Gary Thomas
Producer: Patty Bradley
Directors: Adrian Lawrence, Chris Rolf
Online/compositing: Greg Dunlop
Production Company: Crush, Toronto
Sound Design: Dave deCarlo
Random House: Sharon Klein

Title: Glove Pond: Part 1
Client: Random House Canada / The Gum Thief
Creative Director: Gary Thomas
Producer: Patty Bradley
Director: Stefan Woronko
Online/compositing: Greg Dunlop
Production Company: Crush, Toronto
Sound Design: Dave deCarlo
Random House: Sharon Klein

The latest campaign for Lavalife, via Zig and OPC director Brian Lee Hughes, divides the men of the world into three groups; stable relationship guys, casual daters & the luxurious lovers of intimate encounters. This “Orgasm” spot highlights the intimate group and be sure to watch the delicious bonus multiple orgasm outtake.

Titles: Orgasm, Orgasm Outtakes
Client: Lavalife
Agency: Zig, Toronto
Creative Director: Martin Beauvais
Associate Creative Director: Stephen Leps
Associate Creative Director: Aaron Starkman
Copywriters: Steven Barr, Melanie Hurst
Art Directors: Craig Ferguson, Laura Rogers
Producer: Anna Tricinci
Team Leader: Emily Robinson
Planner: Jennifer Breton
Coach: Andy Macaulay
Production Company: OPC, Toronto
Director: Brian Lee Hughes
Executive Producer: Harland Weisz
Producer: Jeff Low
Director of Photography: Tico Poulakakis
Editorial: Aaron Dark, The Jugernaut, Toronto
Music/Sound Design: Mr. Tunes, Elliot Fienberg

Agency Due North and Head Gear Animation work together to create these tiny tv spots for the Dairy Farmers of Canada.

In total there will be 50 spots in this campaign - all by Head Gear and they won’t all be done until Christmas (or so). As each spot is completed, it begins airing.
Although short, they are full commercials. Through testing the agency discovered that teens (the target audience) have a low attention span and so
they decided to make a whole bunch of very short ads.

The agency requested that they be made odd, quirky yet also rich.
The concept is to have a different look for each spot, which was a wonderful opportunity for Head Gear as they got to pull out all the animation stops and dig deep into their artistic brains. The campaign draws on the full range of animation styles: stop motion, claymation, cel, 2D, collage, etc, etc.

You can view the completed/airing ones here (& download using quicktime pro):

Brad Tucker, creative director for bicoastal creative production company Stardust Studios (www.stardust.tv), has just directed a new set of stylish animated HD spots for Pontiac via Leo Burnett Detroit. The campaign's broadcast elements consist of a :60 spot entitled "Details," a :30 spot entitled "GXP G6," and another :30 version entitled "Halo" which features a tie-in with the much anticipated release of "Halo 3," the final game in Microsoft's Xbox 360 "Halo" Trilogy, which is due out worldwide later this month. The "Details" :60 debuted this month on ABC and ESPN during college football broadcasts, and each spot will air widely over the weeks ahead.

In the campaign's stylized black-and-white footage, all of which is 3D animation created at Stardust and finished in HD resolution, Pontiac's 2008 G6 GXP Coupe, Solstice GXP Roadster and Torrent GXP Crossover are featured racing through high-contrast urban cityscapes - and revealing key design details through creative transitions. Each spot is tagged with voiceover from Matt Dillon.

"The idea for this spot was born from one simple, key visual and one simple thought: It's all in the details," says Leo Burnett Detroit creative director Jeff Cruz. "Stardust really embraced that, not only as the concept of the spot, but in the way they executed it. Their attention to the little things is a big reason why these spots turned out the way they did - and for that, we're thankful."

"The agency presented us with the great of idea of bringing out the details of the Pontiac GXP series through these spots," Tucker explained. "After we won the pitch, we concentrated on the look of the background environments and the transitions. From there, we handled the spot as though it was a live-action job."

Continuing, Tucker added, "We did hand-drawn storyboards to develop the story and editorial sense of the spot, then we did pre-vis on the entire spot with low poly models. Once all of our shots were locked, we built out all the environments, and started to add the high-res vehicles, working closely with the agency to achieve perfect lighting on the cars everywhere they appear."

The spot, ‘Todd’s Life’, features a doll-sized guy who throws off his twist-ties, breaks out of his box and escapes life’s pre-packaged options to explore ‘Virgin’ territory.

Credits:

Agency: Cummins & Partners Brisbane / Creative Directors: Nancy Hartley, James Burchill / Writer: Nancy Hartley / Art Director: James Burchill / Agency Producers: Georgina Toole, Imogen Dick / Account Management: Blair Burchill, Rachael Burrough / Client: Darren Wright, Stephan Pichler / Guillotine Editor: Stewart Reeves

Production Company: Good Oil / Director: Hamish Rothwell / Producer: Juliet Bishop

Fuel VFX supervisor: Paul Butterworth / VFX producer: Dave Kelly / Pre-viz artist: Anders Thonell / 3D Lead: Chris French / Flame artist: Edwin So