The place: Planet Astro in a galaxy far, far away.

The problem: the candy crust is cracking and the cookie center is about to explode, leaving brightly colored candies to fall from the skies.

The solution: three space aliens will travel the galaxy in search of the missing pieces of their planet.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the artistic team at Spin Productions has spent the past six months creating three 30-second spots (two English, one French) for Cadbury’s new Astros which involved the most character animation the shop has handled at one time on half the budget a job of this magnitude usually calls for.

Spin producer Lisa Batke says with a budget of $110,000, it was a big project to take on. ‘A more realistic budget for two :30 animated pieces would have been in the mid to high $200,000,’ she says, ‘but we really wanted get involved in something with character animation on such a large scale.’

The first spot of the pool, ‘Astros Are Here,’ takes place in the chocolate cavern and is almost entirely animated, but finishes off with brightly colored candies falling in a live-action school yard.

Spot number two, ‘Attention Citizens,’ involves the space ship landing in the school yard and the characters interacting in reality.

The process began back in December when Leo Burnett art director George Longley brought images of three aliens (created for Cadbury by another agency) to Spin creative director Joe Sherman to see if he could put a new spin on their appearance.

Sherman redesigned the characters on paper, sketched rough models of them and their space ship, and scanned the drawings into Mac Photoshop, changing the proportions of their big alien heads, bulging eyes and bodies to make them more appealing and give them personalities while retaining their cartoon quality.

Once the characters were designed, Radke Films director Eddy Chu came on board and with Sherman worked out a storyboard and shot an animatic consisting of the storyboard panels cut together in Henry.

As the new year rolled in and Spin artists got to work animating on the Maya, Sherman and Chu took off to sunny Florida on a one-day shoot for the live-action portions of the job. Before rolling the tape, some palm trees in the school yard and hanging Spanish moss decorating the background were covered to disguise the foreign locale.

Then it was back to the studio where the chocolate cavern background, seen in the first spot, was being created in 3D then taken into Photoshop, where Sherman added effects and played around with colors and characters to get a feel for what he wanted before sending it back to the 3D guys.

‘It worked well, there was a lot of back and forth,’ says Sherman. ‘I did a pencil sketch, they did a rough model, I looked over the model and gave it back to them. It was a very collaborative process.’

In addition to starring in the commercials, which began airing on May 18, the otherworldly characters will be appearing on ytv. Spin will be supplying the network with elements from the spots for use in on-air promotions. Also, don’t be surprised, or frightened, if you come across one of these characters walking down the street as life-size costumes of the aliens have also been created.

Spin artists working on the spot include Kyran Kelly, Peter Thorup, Rob Aitchison and Daniel Hornick on the Maya; Steve Lewis on Inferno; Tina McGill and Marji Knight on Henry; and Sara Newman on Alias.

Andy Attalai edited at Chameleon and music producer Clive Desmond handled the sounds at Louder Music.