Animated Inspiration: Bees by Buck

Buck has produced two animated commercials for Sherwin-Williams: 'Bees' and 'Paint Chips.' I can't tell you how much I love how they've integrated something so flashy and yet so banal as paint chips into this vibrant imaginary world. This, and its sister animation, are worth reviewing frame-by-frame to study how Buck's animators have built their client's product into the environment. Worth comparing in both animations is how the color found on each paint chip is used. I'm interested in how they selected paint chips with shades of color that are very close together and used the external light source to simulate light and shading. It's not a complaint mind you, I'm just curious why they chose to go that direction instead of using paint chips with a more pronounced gradient to simulate the intensity and direction of light sources. I'm betting that there were probably a lot of time constraints when working on this project (as with most commercials, there are usually tight deadlines) so the external light source on less pronounced gradients was probably the more economical way to go.

If you follow the link at the beginning of this article, Buck has graciously posted several versions of this commercial on their website (in iPod, low-res, and hi-res quicktime formats) for students of animation to download, dissect, enjoy, and learn from.