Some bluesy tunes set the mood as five very unhappy little seeds sneak out of their apple home in the rain in search of sunshine in a 30-second traditional animation spot for California Apples from Vancouver’s Natterjack Animation.

The $30,000 job was out of L.A.-based Janzen Advertising, which says the favorable Canadian dollar helped to drive the spot north of the border.

The storyboard called for a dark and stormy opening, with the seeds dressed in tiny see-through raincoats making their way out the ‘seed exit’ at the bottom of the apple. As they file out of their home, one angry seed grumbles, ‘I need my sunshine, what do they think I am, a fish?’

Suddenly, the glum music turns happy and the party of five find themselves on a beach where a California apple sits under an umbrella on the sand. They trade in their plastic slickers for bathing trunks and inner tubes.

Natterjack was responsible for creating the final environmental effects along with all the audio sweetening.

According to director Steven Evangelatos, the agency, somewhat nervous on its first animation outing, gave Natterjack generous creative rein in its approach to the spot, which is airing only in the U.S.

With only two and a half weeks to complete the project, the Natterjack crew set to it, starting off with two days of rough drawings which were quickly approved and immediately put into cleanup, about a four-day process.

Everything was shot into the US Animation system by Natterjack animator Steve Taylor, digitized and then touched up in Photoshop. Next it all went over to Rainmaker where Alavio Bides and Fred Richter edited and laid down a rough track as a guide for sound engineer Alan Perkins at Pinewood Sound.

Plenty of effects animation, such as the rain at the beginning, the sparkles on the water at the beach and the shadows on the sand, give the spot its depth and add flavor and charm to the ad.

The effects were done through modules within the US Animation system. The sparkles, for example, were created by using a wire filter.

While everything in the spot was done digitally, the Natterjack team also borrowed from the past, using multiplane effects where foreground and background pan at different speeds. The technique, familiar to Bugs Bunny-era animation, creates a feeling of depth and was used during the rain sequence at the beginning of the spot when the seeds charge out of the apple.

Usually when working on a job such as California Apples, Evangelatos says his team has about three weeks to animate plus a week in paint and one more in post-production, and with only half that time to complete this spot, the job proved to be an extra challenge.

In order to keep the out-of-town client up to date on what was unfolding in Vancouver, hard-resolution stills were printed out nightly on a photo-quality ink jet directly from the US Animation system and then couriered overnight to California.

‘Nothing wastes time like revisions,’ says Evangelatos. ‘The sooner it gets signed off, the sooner we move forward, and for that we can thank technology and good old-fashioned Fedex overnight service.’