Well since we lost Kikkoman I would like to reflect on our production process for this commercial.
So when we first heard about this commercial, it was up for me to come up with the initial idea and then Ben and I would talk about and toss around things that could be added or fixed with the concept.
The original idea was to make a swede'd pokemon parody. I was trying to see if we could make something without using any special effects and see if would could get away with just using practical effects with objects we had around the place. After talking it out and making the story board we decided it was just too much. So I wanted to do something to keep the 'cuteness' of the main character. We searched around youtube for some inspiration and looked up some japanese kikkoman commercials. We stumbled on this idea video:
We both loved the concept of the animated character interacting with the cook. None of spoke japanese, and had no idea what they were saying, we liked what we saw and we ran with a similar idea. So I wrote a new script and drew out a new storyboard. With the new script in hand I did all the animations and came up with this test (starring yours truly as the cook)
Ben thought it was too short and was worried the the movie had to EXACTLY 1 minute. So we filmed it with the idea in hand, added a few ad-libbed lines, and added a little bit more chasing.
After filming Ben took over in post. Taking those animations and applying motion blur and making the tofu appear in the scene. Here's an early animation test:
Tofu Test from Ben C on Vimeo.
During the final week of editing Ben did the ending titles and we redubbed the voices to make them more clearer. We also replaced all of the tofu voices with our good friend Jesse.
The final video looks like:
Kikkoman Kikks It (final submission) from Ben C on Vimeo.
Anyway that's a rundown on how Ben and I get things done.
Hope you enjoy!
