Keep an eye out for a couple of the Geico Gecko ads I worked on at Framestore, now airing! "Decisions" (the Gecko standing in a theatre lobby, talking about the decision of how to buy insurance from Geico--"online, over the phone, or just pop by the local Geico office"), and "Seconds" (the Gecko riding an escalator, trying to explain to everyone how tough of a job he has). "Puma" is also airing, (the Geck talks about choosing a mascot other than a gecko), but I did not work on that. The last one I worked on was called "Local" but I don't think that's aired yet.
On "Decisions" I animated the shot when he says "Then o'course, you got a decision to make, ainya?" And on "Seconds" I animated the first shot--"You can't even, *imagine*, the pressure..." We had quite a few animators working on these spots, there were a total of 7 spots that were divided between 2 teams of animators.
"Seconds" was my favorite of them all, because it is quite different from the other gecko ads. In pretty much all the ads, his job is to promote the 3 different ways to buy from Geico. But in this one, it's an almost pure character moment, where the geck is just trying to convince everyone that his life isn't as easy as it seems! It was a great opportunity to finally delve into as much emotion as we could get away with. The tough thing about animating the gecko is that he has a very reserved range of motion that the animators have to adhere to, but I think we were able to sqeeze a little more expression out of him this time around while still keeping him in character. Sometimes it was actually a nice challenge to try to keep him as expressive as possible, while still keeping the action as small as the client wanted. It's surprising how much so little can do at times. It's too bad we don't have a "deleted scenes" reel though, there was some great acting by my coworkers that didn't make the cut. Such is the life!
I'll definitly be updating my website once I get the render frames from Framestore. In the meantime, if anyone happens to see them on YouTube, let me know!
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