My KFC Commercial

Hello All,

Haven't been around for a while. Anyway, as some of you may have noticed, there was a contest recently held by KFC for 30-second commercials featuring their Popcorn Chicken. The deadline for submission was today, and I realized this on Friday, so I didn't have tome to put a spot together to go out and shoot.....so i decided to try an animation instead. Problem: even though I've been editing film and television professionally for several years, I've never really done any animation aside from basic title effects and moves in After Effects. So here's my first character animation, all done in After Effects. I did send it in to KFC for the contest, but I seriously doubt it will be considered. Figuring out this animation was quite frustrating at times, and I think it shows in the subject matter. Judginf by some of the senses of humor around here, I figured some of you would get a kick out of it, even if KFC doesn't.

It's here for download as a Quicktime (.mov), an MPEG-4 (.mp4), and a crappy Windows Media (.wmv).

Link:
KFC Spots

EDIT: Trying to make it work...please be patient.

EDIT 2: Should be working now.

 

Good work!

 

That was great! Was the box an animated 2d layer or a 3d model? What programs did you use for that?

 

That was awesome! Good job!

 

Thanks Voija et al. The box was a set of simple 2D images created in Illustrator (just straight-on and quarter views) and the chickens are just pics that I arranged in Photoshop. All the movements for the box were done with a series of bulges and warps in After Effects ("bezier warp" does wonders), with simple scaling and positioning depending on motion. You can create a simulated light source that also helps get things less flat. It's really the gradient background and shadows that helps it look 3D, along with certain motion blurs here and there. I didn't even want to do this much, but I kept finding out new things as I went along, and ended up throwing in the kitchen sink. It was fun, but now that I've tried it, I'd really rather hire a real animator from now on.

 

Wow. That was pretty good.

Loved the professional chickens.

 

LOL. That was great.

Not to steal your thunder or put it down or anything but that was along the lines of what I thought up when I saw the contest. I mean I couldn't actually do it like you did but I was thinking it would be funny just to have a real chicken walk out in front of a white screen. Have the chicken stop, turn on a red heat lamp then do some kind of digital effect of the chicken shaking and then popping like a pop corn kernal into a peice of popcorn chicken. My brother thought it would be funnier to have all of the feathers pop off and turn into popcorn chicken leaving a naked chicken behind but I thought that would make people question what they were eating.

Again good job, I'd say you have a chance.

 

That's funny, Weezer, because that's basically all I wanted to do in the beginning. But every time I got something new to work (or almost work), I wanted to try something different. Who doesn't think of that when they hear popcorn chicken....such a strange name. The thing about animation is that you slave away for hours.....and you end up with a mere second of screen time, IF you're cranking. The feathers would have been a royal pain to composite, and probably just a bit too much going on in the frame. I even considered a lightsaber sequence, but didn't bother.

 

I heard about this. The prize was 10,000 dollars! It was too late to prepare by the time I found out. Good job.

 

Do they still sell popcorn chicken heads there?

 

That was McD's! I was goin to put that in, but no time or space. I didn't enter to win, just to goof around. This is in no way suitable for advertising or national television. I probably would have taken the time to go out and film something a bit more suitable.

 

I didn't think they were actually looking for airable spots. I thought they were just looking for concepts to produce on their own dime ?

 

The rules say that they can go straight to air with 'em. But not this one, obviously.