Want to be on Motionographer? Submit your work now!

Get a daily digest of Motionographer's posts in your inbox. Subscribe now.

Tom & Mark: “Muffin Man”

Tom and Mark (Nexus Productions) have outdone themselves with “Muffin Man,” a new spot for the recently rebranded Royal Bank of Canada. Although the spot is entirely CG, it captures the retro charm of claymation through its textures, colors and reduced frame rate.

This is one of those spots that’s pure fun to watch again and again. (It works well backwards, too.) I’m especially fond of the way it ends: increasingly baroque scenes of progress and complexity give way to the simplicity of Mr. Muffin himself, happily finishing up a business call while munching on the pastry that started it all. Brilliant.


Title: Muffin Man
Length: 1×60″
Director: Tom & Mark Perrett

CLIENT
Client: Royal Bank of Canada

AGENCY
Agency: BBDO Toronto
Agency Producer: Beatrice Bodogh, Tracey Azzopardy
V.P Group Creative Director: Ian MacKellar
Creative Director: Carlos Moreno
Creative Director: Peter Ignazi

PRODUCTION and ANIMATION
Production Company: Nexus Productions
Directors: Tom and Mark Perrett
Producer: Melody Sylvester
Production Manager: Nathalie Le Berre
Animation and Post-Production: Nexus Productions

MUSIC AND SOUND DESIGN
Music: Brains & Hunch
Sound Design: Brains & Hunch

Posted on 30 July 2008 by justin

Tags: , , , , , ,

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (56 votes: 4.43 out of 5)

RSS feed

26 Comments »

Comment by Stephen
2008-07-30 17:13:05

Beautiful. Flawlessly executed.

 
Comment by JP
2008-07-30 17:41:19

This is great. Love the simplicity of the character design too.

 
Comment by monovich
2008-07-30 18:22:22

What a fantastic piece. the CG claymation look gets a +10 for nostalgia points. Makes me feel like a kid.

 
Comment by Justyot
2008-07-30 18:32:05

Amazing! The textures, the colours, the sights and sounds. Wowwaweewa. It’s like the 70’s and everybody is pressuring my dad to do acid again.

 
Comment by oeuf
2008-07-30 18:38:24

Very nice work. Reminiscent of old Aardman stuff. Alot of nice details that warrant multiple views.

 
Comment by Ara
2008-07-30 19:04:02

smart.

 
Comment by Simon Robson
2008-07-30 20:27:39

Tom & Mark’s best work to date I reckon…

Comment by boca
2008-07-31 13:25:24

Agreed!

 
 
Comment by Ian
2008-07-30 20:36:54

Incredibly good. Watched it several times, and will continue to do so. Flawless.

 
Comment by Paul
2008-07-30 22:45:46

BOING!

awesome

 
Comment by Petja
2008-07-31 01:55:50

Excellent work! Feels so magical..
So they turned the lovely park into a mall… interesting..

 
Comment by tomorrowisclosed
2008-07-31 03:54:57

a bank ad that leaves you smiling! lordy

 
Comment by MA
2008-07-31 06:28:34

Warm & tingly. Love it.

 
Comment by dex
2008-07-31 06:52:13

very impressive!

 
Comment by sting_is_gay
2008-07-31 07:10:57

beautiful animation, but what about the content? dark underlying issues here: borrow lots of money, build and expand over green space, increase obesity in kids and turn into a fat rich businessman yourself. and keep building and expanding. maybe in the last frame that whispering money lender should choke on his muffin…

Comment by muffinz
2008-07-31 12:09:16

Seriously! The banker whispering in his ear is like slugworth from willy wonka. The animation is great but man he seemed like such a nice muffin man at the beginning and became a sleazy cell phone totting business man at the end. I hope all the muffin mans watching don’t sell out like this poor little one did. I mean a franchise in a mall? This is like a prequel to Wall-E

Comment by top_o_the
2008-07-31 12:36:50

You guys are right…. the whisper is dark indeed.

(Comments wont nest below this level)
 
Comment by boca
2008-07-31 13:26:19

Haha! Nice conspiracy theory muffinz! :-D

(Comments wont nest below this level)
Comment by Justyot
2008-08-01 00:23:10

Ummm… it’s a commercial for a BANK. They lend money to help your business prosper. The spot is… well, spot on.

 
 
 
 
Comment by tod
2008-07-31 07:29:50

awesome!

 
Comment by Andy
2008-07-31 09:35:12

Same team who did the Coke Unity Olympics spot apparently… you can’t accuse them of being a one trick pony.

 
Comment by boca
2008-07-31 13:28:12

Wicked! I love the sort of “Eames Powers of 10″ approach to it, very effective! 5 stars fo sho!

 
Comment by krpdesign
2008-07-31 13:36:18

What codec is this in? Suddenly lots of videos aren’t playing for me, and come up with a question mark over the Quicktime Q.

Comment by justin
2008-07-31 17:16:05

It’s in Sorenson 3 with AAC audio. Should be playable with QT 7.

Have you recently installed any other codecs?

 
 
Comment by Kenzo
2008-07-31 14:49:03

Brilliant!

 
Comment by Deocliciano
2008-08-01 05:27:20

Just Awesome!

 

You must be logged in to post a comment.