Joe FM's Stickman in the Third Dimension!

Hired Gun Productions and Rat Creek Design recently completed a 3D 60 second spot as a part of the highly successful Edmonton based Joe FM animated stickman commercials. Joe FM's station manager challenged Ben Babchishin at Hired Gun to come up with an innovative twist in the ongoing saga of the stickman and his wacky journeys through eighties and nineties music videos. The decision was made to do a 3D commercial, cardboard glasses and all; a unique and challenging idea that hasn't been tried in Edmonton advertising in many years (if ever)!

In partnership with the CTV 6:00 News at CFRN, Joe FM is airing the 3D commercial during the thursday night news and clues in the commercial allow listeners to call in to the station for a chance to win prizes. As an additional tie in, the commercial features caricatures of CFRN News anchors Carrie Doll and Daryl McIntyre as major characters in the spot, along with the ubiquitous stickman. Thousands of 3D glasses were distributed in an attention-getting campaign, generating lots of buzz and interest over at the station and throughout the city.

The commercial was produced at Rat Creek Design using the red and blue anaglyph method for creating the 3D effect, a technique which, through the use of color filtering and altered parallax, effectively sends a different image to each eye, making the brain think it's seeing actual depth. The individual elements were drawn and animated, then composited in Adobe AfterEffects in a 3D environment. The result was then shot with 2 differently positioned "cameras" within AfterEffects, which were then tinted red and blue and recombined for the final image. The resulting output was color-corrected at Studio Post to ensure maximum color separation during NTSC broadcast.

This is the ninth stickman spot the team has produced for Joe FM over the last 3 years, all of which have run in heavy rotation in Edmonton. The stickman, now an integral part of Joe FM advertising campaign, was originally conceptualized by Ben Babchishin, designed and illustrated by Keith Sun of The Moving Castle I.S. and brought to life by Kim Clegg at Rat Creek Design. This dynamic trio continues to create the animated everyman whose day is made that much better by a healthy dose of eighties and nineties music supplied by, of course, Joe FM.

Hired Gun, Rat Creek, and The Moving Castle are continuing to partner in animated content, currently working together on several projects including a 3D (yes the glasses again!) animated safety video for young children. The Joe FM spots have been nominated at the last 2 AMPIA Awards in the categories of best commercial and animation.

Joe FM Edmonton, or CKNG FM, is a subsidiary company of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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