With its repeat rehab stints and nipple slips, celebrity gossip often seems a tad too bizarre for the real, flesh-and-blood world. Better to place it in the world of comics, where the notion of a starlet getting more fame for exposing her crotch to the paparazzi is practically normal.

To promote the second season of Courteney Cox's celebrity tabloid drama Dirt, FX Network turned to recently launched live-action/design production company Arsenal to create six tongue-in-cheek promos. They take the most salacious of celebrity gossip - from an STD causing an A-list divorce to the tale of an innocent gerbil and an unnamed celeb - and turn them into colorful, pop art/comic book vignettes.

Designed and directed by Vonetta Taylor, the Emmy winner behind the titles for HBO's Carnivale, the promos - a mix of 2D, 3D and rotoscoping - take their theme from Dirt's print campaign, featuring Cox as a super heroine presiding over the world of celebrity. To bring that concept into the animated world, Taylor referenced the female figures of Patrick Nagel and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, while maintaining a contemporary feel that could draw in the target female 18-35 audience.

Casting played a role in creating that sense of nowness via cameos from Cox and a few well-placed look-alikes.

"With the 'Photo Op' spot [which references the aforementioned 'crotchograph'], we wanted to have a Paris Hilton-type celebrity. With our paparazzi we were definitely referencing paparazzi that you would see outside the local celebrity spots in LA," says Taylor. "It was a conscious choice so that the audience could connect with an air of celebrity and not just some random actor."

The short turnaround time was a challenge for Arsenal - six spots had to be delivered in five weeks with only two days allocated for shooting - but that pressure was also the catalyst for steering the campaign in a new direction. "When FX came to us they originally wanted to roto footage from the show," explains EP Michele Maples. "We knew it was a monumental task and they weren't going to get a consistent look through the spots. From a production standpoint we proposed shooting the actors on green screen so that we wouldn't have to roto and separate the characters from the backgrounds. That was probably the single thing from a technical aspect that made this job doable in a ridiculously fast-paced schedule."

Another challenge came in the form of the hapless gerbil, used in the "Rumors" spot based on the bizarre urban myth involving Richard Gere.

"We found out that you couldn't have gerbils in the state of California so we used a hamster," laughs Maples.

Arsenal http://www.thearsenal.tv