Behind The Scenes Of A Stop Motion Commerical For Nintendo's Paper Mario

In a fun and unique approach that combines many different facets of art and multimedia, production group CanCanClub out of Buenos Aires worked with Antonio Balseiro from Gazz and 1st Ave Machine, Art Director Hernán Aragunde, and the crew from Nintendo to create a 30-second commercial for "Paper Mario Sticker Star." In this first of two behind the scenes videos, you catch a peek at the live action video shot, but then also the process of creating a world out of paper, capturing it with photos, and then animating those assets.

***UPDATE***
AT THE REQUEST OF THE PRODUCTION COMPANY, THE VIDEOS AND OTHER INFORMATION WERE PULLED DOWN. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

It's really cool to see different tools and styles all come together for this project. Paper artists working with their hands to make the paper landscapes, digital artists working in Illustrator and Photoshop, photographers lighting and capturing each still frame, and then animators linking it all together in After Effects and other animation software. When collaborative efforts come together, great work is typically the result, as is the case with this commercial project.

For the video portion, they shot with a RED Epic, and for the stop motion they were shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II equipped with Leica Elmarit and Sumicron lenses. You can see in a couple of clips that the camera is actually positioned upside-down. This was so they could get the camera close to the ground level of their paper set for the perspective they desired. Lighting proved to be a challenge, as they wanted to match the video game as much as possible. This meant no hard shadows with an even illumination, whilst keeping enough shadow to reveal depth.

And here is the final spot: