Charlex Hits Technical and Creative Sides for Cingular

An entire stadium filled with schoolchildren, all with a series of colored cards. In meticulous orchestration they all flip over cards, together forming a massive and intricate image spanning the entire stadium. They all flip the cards and a new image appears.
This collective articstic expression, often used in Korea, was the basis of BBDO New York’s concept for the new Cingular spot “Flippin,” in which a series of phones flip and rotate to form images.

“When I heard about the idea I really wasn’t sure how we would do it,” admits Will Kim, lead designer/art director at Charlex.
BBDO provided a number of pop art-styled illustrations that they wanted the phones to represent but left it up to Charlex to define the pacing, transitions an tempo. First Charlex started writing algorithms into Autodesk Maya that would take illustrations and replicate them using the four colors of the phones (pink, white, gray and black).
“We were originally going that with real geometry within Maya until it just got too heavy and that is when we switched over to a particle based system so that instead of using 100 phones we couple use 1,000 or 250,000,” explains CG Supervisor Keith McCabe.
While the CG department worked out the process of converting images into 3D phones, designer Will Kim was working with BBDO to get illustrations that would translate well into a flip phone image.
“The design side was a challenge,” says Kim. "We spent a lot of time going back and forth trying to get the images right so that even when they were pixilated they’d still be clear and appear stylish. Some of the original illustrations were just too detailed and we’d loos a lot of that detail in the final version. So it was just a matter of getting stark illustrations that worked.”
Kim then took those illustrations into Adobe After Effects to create the basic 2D animation. Then lead effects technical director Bill Watral ran those animations through the Maya script they wrote to convert it all from 2D to 3D phones. Animation director Anthony Tabtong put the finishing touches on the project by putting in the camera moves around and through the 3D design.
“It was interesting project for me because it was a big balancing act between the technical side and the creative side,” notes Kim.
Credits
Agency: BBDO New York, BBDO Atlanta
Chief Creative Officer David Lubars
Executive Creative Director Susan Credle
Creative Director Steve Rutter

Art Director Scott Higgins

Assistant Art Director Jacob Maraya

Copywriter Chris McMurtrey

Junior Copywriter Peter Alsante

Senior Producer Nicole Lundy
Senior Music Producer Melissa Chester

Animation Production Company: Charlex, Inc.

Director Alex Weil
Lead Designer/Art Director Will Kim
CG Supervisor Keith McCabe
Executive Producer Adam Isidore
Producer Christine Vallee
Editor John Zawisha
Lead Effects TD Bill Watral
Lead Character TD Stephen K. Mann
Animation Director Anthony Tabtong
Senior Animator Pat Porter
Animator Adam Burke
Lighting Director James Fisher
Lighting TD Gong Myung Lee
Lighting TD James Rowell
Lighting TD Luis Cantillo
Lighting TD John Volny
Lighting TD Ivan Guerrero

Designer Bowe King
Flame Artist Philana Dias
Flame Artist Evan Schoonmaker
Flame Artist Greg Cutler
Additional Edit Michael Angelo

Illustration Company: Vault 49

Mix: HSR
Mixer Steve Rosen