Table of Contents Show
Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 20, 2018. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Creating something provocative that leaves a lasting impression on the audience – that was Noah Demirci’s aim with his final project. Sexual content is naturally predestined for such a purpose, but these types of commercials are usually censored or only broadcast in night-time programmes. So Noah set himself the difficult task of creating commercials with stories that are superficially funny and innocuous for children, while their offensive message is only apparent to adults.
The idea of fat Willy, who gets into extremely tight situations in his everyday life but knows how to help himself out of his misery with lubricant as a body cream, finally came to Noah while he was falling asleep. His notebook is always ready for use on his bedside table, in which the idea was sketched out directly. Over the next few days, he worked it out and developed the various situations for the short clips. “Apart from “Lube-X”, it has never happened to me before that an idea actually turns into a film. Most of them seem brilliant to me while I’m writing them down. Unfortunately, when I watch them the next morning, it’s often completely useless stuff,” laughs Noah.
Willy, the penis
In order to convey the dirty message of the film, a suitable protagonist was of course needed. The external characteristics of the character Willy are primarily a result of the unusual task: the production of a lubricant advert in which a child is the main character. In terms of his appearance, Willy had to look like an overgrown penis, and Noah also asked himself how a penis with a brain and emotions would behave in the given situations. “For the character design, I first drew several versions that consisted mainly of organic, round shapes. I had always been very fond of the work of animator Glen Keane and initially opted for an approach based on Disney designs. It was only during the modelling process that I slowly realised that I could give the figure, which was supposed to be the humanisation of a penis, a bit more character if it actually looked a bit more like a penis. I changed the proportions afterwards so that the figure looked more alienated, more fleshy and less human,” explains Noah.
The artist then drew thumbnails with various ideas of options for objects that Willy could get stuck in. He concentrated on those that worked with reduced backgrounds, as the time frame for realising the project was very tight. The three scenarios that ultimately made it to the final selection and were drawn as storyboards were a hula hoop, a water slide and an MRI machine. Noah later created the animatics based on the storyboards. “I would have liked to realise more situations, but this was not possible due to time constraints. So I decided to go for the funniest ones. If the objects still showed a reaction – for example, they broke, expanded or went limp – it made all the more sense.”
[caption id="attachment_73336" align="alignnone" width="1772"]
Initially, Willy was to be given a Disney-like design. However, the look was increasingly adapted in favour of the ideaBeing funny … is not that easy
The most important thing was to test in advance whether the situation comedy would work. Noah comments: “It was very easy at the beginning. When I pitched the ideas, people laughed and I knew that it was just a matter of getting it right. In the production phase, it became more and more difficult. I had already looked at the storyboards and animations so many times that they no longer triggered any reactions in me. I therefore showed them to my fellow students at regular intervals to see whether the scenes were producing the desired reactions. At some point, however, they also knew the gags inside out and I simply had to trust that I had done my preparatory work correctly. I was incredibly nervous on the day of the premiere, but fortunately the audience reacted very well – which was a huge relief,” says Noah happily.
One-man project with funding
Up to this point, the animation student had never made or directed a film from start to finish. However, as this challenge had always appealed to him, he seized the opportunity to tackle it for his final project. Apart from the sound design and film music, Noah worked alone on the project, which had advantages and disadvantages: “On the one hand, I had one hundred per cent control over the entire project. So it was up to me whether something would be good or bad. However, this also included the more technical areas such as rigging and simulation, in which I had little to no experience,” says Noah.
Fortunately, when he was granted funding from the Swiss television channel SRF, he was able to distribute these types of tasks to fellow first and second year students: “We had to create a funding dossier for our projects with a script, storyboard, character design, concept art, thumbnails and provisional budget plan, which we sent to SRF. There, a certain number of projects were selected for funding. When Swiss television decided that my personal lubricant adverts should receive funding, I was quite surprised, but also very grateful,” recalls Noah. As his fellow students were still attending regular classes while he was helping out, Noah had to be flexible with the deadlines and brief the students as early as possible with the tasks that needed to be completed. “I am incredibly grateful to everyone who supported me with the project. They did an outstanding job,” says the artist. Noah also took on some of the rigging himself, but due to his
however, due to his lack of knowledge, this led to some problems later on: “The result was probably the most arduous rig I had ever animated with. Apart from the eyebrows, I wasn’t able to animate the left and right sides of the face individually, which annoyingly limited me a lot in the later process.”
In terms of hardware, Noah used an iMac and the university’s render farm. In terms of software, TVPaint, ZBrush and Maya were used for the 2D and 3D animation of “Lube-X”. He also works with Maya in his current job as a character animator at Stories, a production company in Zurich (www.stories.ch). He supplements missing features with scripts: “I believe that many of these scripts should actually be integrated into Maya, as they are sometimes crucial to achieving the best possible result,” says Noah.
The compositing of the render passes, the colour grading and the animation of the 2D motion graphics were done in After Effects. Noah would actually have liked to work with Nuke, but there wasn’t enough time to familiarise himself with the software. The rendering was done with Arnold. The work with Arnold went almost without a hitch, apart from a few isolated rendering errors, which the excellent IT support at the university always sorted out as quickly as possible.
Noah did not follow a specific schedule, but he always met the two-month deadlines set by the university. “But now I’m a bit more organised,” laughs the artist.
More from Willy?
Noah still sees a lot of untapped potential in the idea of “Lube-X”. “I wish it had come to me two years later. Because back then I wasn’t able to realise the films as professionally as I would have liked. I often think about what I would do differently today. On the other hand, I was able to learn an incredible amount from the project because I had already realised three animated films throughout the entire development process at the age of 21. I might revisit Willy’s story at some point with a redesign, new storylines and a team, but at the moment I prefer to concentrate on new ideas. If I ever make another advertising film, people who are always bored during the commercial break will definitely be my target group again.”