Toronto-based TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation recently completed the second in a pool of three spots for McCann-Erickson and client Nestle promoting Nescafe Instant specialty coffees. The deceptively casual pool juxtaposes torn-out colored heads of staid-looking folk with groovier sharp-cut black-and-white bodies.

First off the boards was the 30-second ‘Beat Cafe,’ whose hip attitude is enhanced by the music track of a swinging, walking base line. It went to air mid-April. topix is also working on a cinema version of the second spot, Bankers Cafe au lait, and putting the finishing touches to number three in the pool.

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The project originated at McCann- Erickson as a print campaign hearkening back to the photomontage and hand-lettered look of the early ’60s print and jazz-album cover designs. Looking at the torn-head-body thing devised by the agency team of art director Michael Wurstlin, cd Michael Fromowitz, writer Andrew Anthony and producer Jan Riley, topix producer Sylvain Taillon and director William Cameron decided ‘why reinvent the wheel’ and set about putting the thing in motion.

Bringing these characters to life relied on a mix of dead-clever scripts, mondo live-action performances and a tricky amalgam of film and computer animation.

In responding to the challenge of creating believable characters from wildly contrasting parts and carry over the hip gestures of the bodies to the whole character, Cameron wanted to be a bit blase about the technique, as if everything were done this way.

The technique is a combination of traditional photomation, image processing and digital collage. Black-and-white film was printed to paper, hand-cut and scanned into the computer. The color elements were transferred to video and digitally composited with hand-torn paper. The elements were then key framed together on the flint system to integrate the movements and gestures.

Imported Artists live-action director Richard D’Allesio and dop Simon Mestel shot the performances of heads and bodies separately; and despite having video playback on the set, the match of head to body movements relied more on choreography of the scene than on technical gear.

Cameron took selected scenes from the off-line done by Third Floor Editing’s Richard Unruh, went back to film with them and printed b&w frames as 8 x 10 photos which were then whisked off to ace montagers at Cuppa’ Coffee. Cuppa’s Adam Shaheen, Bruce Allcock and Steve Hillman did the hand-cut body work and shuttled the frames back to Cameron who labored over an animation stand to produce moving sequences, which then went back to film-to-tape transfer. Cameron then was ready for the final motion-tracking, animating, recompositing marathon that produced the cutting-edge pool.