The CN Tower can withstand a dinosaur attack.

That’s one of the messages hidden in Cuppa Coffee Animation’s new Shoppers Drug Mart spot promoting Toronto Raptors ‘Slam Seats.’ Working with Mad Dog Digital, Cuppa Coffee combined old-fashioned stop-motion animation with the post-production magic of Flame to create a mini b-movie in the classic-yet-cheesy style of Godzilla.

The 30-second spot features a 50-story, Raptoresque, origami dinosaur wreaking havoc on the fair city of Toronto. Backing away from high-tech animation, Cuppa Coffee looked to Japanese b-movies from days gone by and went decidedly low-tech.

‘It was a nice departure for us,’ says Adam Shaheen, executive producer. ‘We’re constantly wanting to do things like this, but it’s finding people who are willing to make that leap with us.’

The menacing dinosaur is an intentionally obvious papier-mache creation and Toronto’s skyline is recreated with paper, cardboard and foil.

From the onset of the spot, you can tell the city’s having a bad day. An eerie orange light hangs over the paper skyline and murky time-lapse clouds race by at an alarming pace. Enter the big red meanie, swinging his papier-mache tail and taking random bites from high-rise cardboard office towers. As he roars through the city breathing fire, we catch his reflection in Bay Street’s mirrored buildings.

Lightning crashes and the raptor roars as he tries to topple that eternal Toronto icon, the CN Tower. It’s bent and shaken, but the mighty freestanding structure prevails. It will not fall.

Cuppa Coffee originally had much different plans for the tower. Says Shaheen: ‘They made us leave the Dome alone, seeing as that’s where the Raptors play. And the CN Tower, that Toronto feel-good icon, we had to lay off that. The original idea was to have the dinosaur pick up the tower and jab it in the Dome, but that didn’t go over.’

Continuing on his tour of terror, the dinosaur spots a Shoppers Drug Mart through the dust and smoke. Rather than just smashing it to rubble, as he seems to like to do, he bends in for a closer look and spies the Raptors logo on a sign that reads ‘Tickets on Sale.’ Perhaps he feels a kinship with the creature on the poster, perhaps he’s a b-ball fan, or perhaps he’s just tired, but as the sky opens and the music reaches a crescendo, he leaves the drug store standing.

Heading back towards the horizon, tromping over the rubble of a once-great city (minus the still-standing tower, of course), the monster goes on his merry way. At the end of this mini-movie all that’s missing is a title which says ‘The End.’

By manipulating the monster on a set of Toronto created by Russell Zeid and capturing each frame as a computer file, the animators staged the destruction. The buildings were created from foil and foam core, which allowed them to stand upright but still crumple easily. ‘We played with the fact that this was obviously a paper city,’ says Shaheen. ‘At points you can see the buildings actually tear. Like when the dinosaur takes a big bite out of it.’

Effects (like film grain, smoke and explosions) and the time-lapse sky were added at Mad Dog in Flame. ‘By combining traditional, low-tech animation shooting techniques with the high-tech post through Flame, it’s a very fun-looking effect,’ says Sylvain Taillon, executive producer at Mad Dog.

At Cuppa Coffee, Julian Grey was director and chief animator and Tim Snyder assisted. Senior Flame artist at Mad Dog was James Cooper and video operations were handled by Christian Ouellette. The music – best described as ‘music to destroy by’ – was composed and designed by Byron Wong at Random Music. Mike Rowland of Deschamps Studios was the sound engineer. At Chiat/Day, Bette Minott was the producer and art direction was handled by Steve Driggs.

Now the real question. What does that overgrown reptile have against Toronto anyway? MEA