It seems you never have to grow up if you work at dkp (aka Dan Krech Productions), the Toronto visual effects and animation shop. dkp staffers have had a blast lately bringing several animated spots to life.

The shop was recently asked to design and animate a 30-second all-cgi commercial for New York agency Towne Silverstein Rotter, promoting the video game ‘Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes 2’ for developer 3DO. Aptly titled ‘Cold War,’ it features green and tan soldiers battling inside a refrigerator.

The fight climaxes with Sarge hurling a grenade beside a cooked turkey and warning his men to hit the dirt. ‘Now that’s entertainment,’ gushes Chad Nixon, creative director at dkp.

dkp’s Kyran Kelly served as animation director on the piece, Heather Bain was effects producer and Yi Zhao was the head animation artist.

Toy soldiers reappear in the latest edition of a commercial gig dkp has held for six years running – the Amarada Hess Christmas toy spot for Grey Advertising, New York. ‘Hess Fire Truck’ retains the tried-and-true formula of having the miniature men escort this season’s special offer toy. Nixon headed the effects supervision for the live shoot, where the yuletide environment was recreated with actors, puppets and the ‘hero’ truck.

Once all the action, backplates and reference plates were shot, everything was transferred to the digital domain, where compositing, 2D effects, rig-removal and clean-up were performed by dkp’s Terry Dale on a Jaleo system. Using Toronto-based Side Effects’ Houdini animation software, dkp animators Rob Smith and Barry Sanders created the army of tiny helpers.

‘The soldiers are all designed, modeled and animated to [resemble] something between the Nutcracker Prince and Pinocchio,’ comments Nixon. ‘It’s a difficult balance between giving them enough character and independence to achieve a believable range of motion for the tasks required of them and still retaining their rigid, wooden, toy-like attitude.’

Another recent dkp animation project of note is ‘Blastfire,’ again for Towne Silverstein Rotter, which advertises Nerf’s new toy of the same name. dkp animated five villains that will be integrated into a live-action scene where they get nuked in a Nerf wrestling ring by a child firing five Nerf darts from the weapon. *

-www.dkp.com