How do you make a nice little animated bee look like a fiercely competitive runner in the race of the century? That was the challenge facing the creative team at The Animation House, the commercial division of Evening Sky Productions, when they set about putting Mel, the animated Honey Nut Cheerios spokesbee, in a head-to-head race against a real-life hurdler.

The spot, ‘Down To The Wire,’ posed specific challenges to the team even though they had created a number of spots combining real-life actors with animated characters before. Senior animator Marcello Wilmot, drawing the bee by hand onto paper printouts of every frame, had to make each movement look like the bee was really racing a live person. ‘Getting his pacing to match the professional runner was a challenge, definitely,’ Wilmot says.

The animator did this by watching the tape of the runner over and over, studying his movements and emulating that with the animated bee. It took Wilmot, whose portfolio boasts animations of Mel the Bee, Rice Krispies’ Snap, Crackle and Pop characters and the Nesquik Rabbit, three weeks to draw the 30-second spot.

Once Wilmot and his animation team finished placing Mel into each frame, the sketches then went to a shadow effects artist, who created lighting, highlights and cast shadows.

Because the spot used strong, dramatic key lighting, the shadow effects artist had to pay particularly close attention to toning and sculpting the bee with light to match that of the live character, says animation director Terry Godfrey. By watching frame by frame how the light affected the live-action racer, the animator could mirror these effects.

The gear: The animations were composited and colored with sgi-based usanimation software.

The artists: Wilmot was the senior animator, Godfrey was animation director, and digital compositing was done by Francois Valentyne. Dale Heslip of Blink Pictures directed the live action.