class-key chew-po animation director Bil White collaborated with Leslie Dektor to produce "The Real Internet" and "Jimm/DSL" for Earthlink's "Get Linked" campaign through TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles.

Background

"It's a fairly basic story," says White, "I started out in effects. I ran motion control cameras both film and video-based." Shooting effects and tabletop at a post house in Atlanta called Crawford, White learned cel animation and went to work on the West Coast as a designer at a small boutique in 1995 operated by Unitel Video. White self-financed a spec reel that was seen and picked up by class-key's John Andrews.

Concept behind Earthlink's "Get Linked"

"I have to give a lot of credit to the ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day, LA; they had a fairly clear idea of what they were trying to do. They had sold the client on the look, which is pure orange and black and a very bold graphic style. Then they got interested in the idea of real people talking about the real Internet because that's part of their tagline.

How did they do that?

"What it is in its simplest form is taking live action and rotoscoping. Essentially it's as if you're painting on top of the real film so that frame-by-frame you're not just looking at it, you're actually drawing on top of it. It allows you to be very accurate about little gestures or details in the faces.

"I think you have to credit Leslie Dektor [who shot the live action] for getting these very natural performances. Part of what's really charming about it, I think, is when the people hesitate or gesture in ways that aren't super smooth. It seems more human and then the animation amplifies those gestures."

Rotoscoping with computer in-betweening a.k.a. the Liquid Line Technique

"We used a combination of off-the-shelf software like Painter, After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop. We started designing variations of these people by accentuating a certain feature or leaving out certain things in order to come up with an illustration style that captured their mood.

"From there we began animating frame-by-frame and essentially moving the line around to fit what was happening with the character's face. Sometimes we would skip over frames so that the computer would in-between, which gives that kind of elastic liquid look to the animation.

"We would essentially draw the faces on top of the video and then move down a couple of frames until we saw a point where there was a clear change in the person's face and essentially redraw it at that point.

"Jimm/DSL"

"The Jimm spot focuses solely on one person because he was so interesting. What was fun about it was that because it was the same guy in every shot, we had to make sure there was a distinct change in every cut. Between the fact that his voice sounds the same and there are certain features like his nose and his glasses that are going to remain constant, it was fun to try to push the rest of him as far as we could."

Boards: What goes through your head when you are working on a project? What is the goal?

White: I'm hoping to straddle the line and combine live action with funky effects or animation or some kind of design, so that it's always a hybrid. I'm always trying to mix two things together. The challenge facing directors is finding your own niche so that you can develop a real identity. One of the really tricky things is finding out where you belong and distinguishing yourself amongst really great work.

Future projects

White has just been awarded a commercial for Post cereal through Ogilvy & Mather in Los Angeles. It will combine live action with cel animation, 3D animation and 2D design.