Charles Schwab Commercials

Beginning in November 2008, Mekanism came to me to create key frames for their animations. After they live-action film the characters, they take frames from the video and send them to me to create layered illustrations using Adobe Illustrator. We limit the colors in the face, clothing and hair to give it a cleaner look and speed up the animation process.

Anything that moves is on it's own layer. For example, if there is a car in the shot that drives through, I build the whole car on one layer using compiled stills I pull from the original video and then they are able to roll the car through the shot. Once complete, I send my artwork to Mekanism and they animate it. That's essentially it. My illustration is more than just a style guide for the commercial, since a lot of it - the backgrounds, clothes, stationary vehicles - are not touched by the animation studio.

Make sure you check out the animated commercials