I recently had the pleasure of working with
Mark Lambert from
The Park Group on a couple of commercials for the RoomStore. Mark has a very impressive resume. He's worked on such films as Narnia; the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - Polar Express - Hollowman - Stuart Little - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, just to name a few.
Now on first blush you might think yeah, big deal, a commercial for a furniture store. And yes I understand but this was the first time in something like 25 years since I've had the opportunity to work in animation.
The last time was back in the early eighties when I worked on an animated music video for
The Alan Parson's Project for a song called
Don't Answer Me. The studio that it was done through was
Broadcast Arts, at the time they were located in D.C.
Shortly after the completion of the video the studio moved to NYC and made the first season of
Pee Wee's Playhouse. While working on the music video I had the supreme pleasure of working with
Michael W. Kaluta, a comic book and fantasy artist of the highest caliber and huge hero of mine.
So yes, I was excited to be working in animation again however limited the animation had to be due to time and budget constraints. Luckily I was working with someone who's knowledge of the history and different techniques of animation is very deep. Mark wanted to create a visual sensibility that was somewhat along the lines of early
Warner Brother's cartoons and being a big fan those old cartoons I was more than happy to oblige. Having said that we're well aware of the fact that the animation is very limited but again we did what we could given the time and budget restraints.
I'm very happy with the end result and had a blast working with Mark and everyone else at
The Park Group.
