Adidas collaborated with HVW8 to create the Crazy 8 Illustrations, three 8×8 canvas’ celebrating the return of these shoes. The filmmaking team, La Moustache, collaborated with HVW8 while they were painting to create this film.

Here is what Dale Hayward and Fred Caron from La Moustache had to say about the project:

We had been talking with the guys over at HVW8 a couple of times about how we could fuse their particular graffiti style within some sort of animation project. This past december HVW8 collective was approached by Adidas to create three 8×8 paintings for print ads & then would be use afterwards as the backdrop during the “Adi-Hoop Competition”. That’s when we saw a great opportunity to play with and learn how to integrate animation into what would be  a mini-documentary about the
creation of the paintings.

Early on a Saturday morning, without having seen the final comps of the paintings, or seeing the location of the shoot, we headed up into a small studio space above an art store. Equipped with macs, canons, and dragon, we jumped into the project. Doing everything on location (to limit the post-production work) we ended up trying a lot of different angles and approaches along the way. Always trying to keep track of what the artists were doing during their steps of the creation was the hardest, since we had to improvise with the artist, all the animation had to flow with their
paintings and there’s no going back.

So after 5, 16 hour shoot days, we delved into the edit of combining the stop-mo and live action. It was fun challenge to edit animation like this instead of traditionally never editing animation, you always edit during
the board stage. since there wasn’t time to do any, we improvised right up until the end with the live action to accompany.

looks like we’ll be doing some more of these soon too, so we’ll let you know. take it easy!

-dale and fred

music: Snoop Dogg ft. Marty James “El Lay”

Behind the scenes:

From The JESS3 Vimeo page:

It’s incredible to think about how much time and energy goes into the making of a short 30-second spot. But when you’re talking stop-motion animation, it takes hours and hours to produce one second. The JESS3 team in LA worked round the clock to make this exciting spot about Gmail’s mobile interface, now available on select phone browsers in 44 languages, and here’s a look at how we did it.

Focused on educating viewers about Gmail’s “just like your web-based-browser” interface available in 44 languages on mobile devices like the iPhone, this larger-than-life 30-second animation was done through the meticulous processes of stop motion and 100% papercraft.

What better way to highlight the features of Gmail, that will now be available on select phone browsers in 44 languages, than to bring these features to life, march them from the web to the iPhone, all through stop-motion animation?

By creating characters out of the familiar and favorite Gmail features, everything from the stars to the threaded conversations take on their own identity and purpose. The original marching band soundtrack sets the upbeat tone as the characters excitedly peel off from the laptop interface and confidently march their way into the iPhone browser. What took around-the-clock weeks of tender love and care into making the props and the stage transformed into an epic 30-second spot for GMAIL.