A new recipe, a new name, Honey Monster Puffs is set to brighten UK breakfast times once again and reach a new generation of cereal lovers.
A mainstay of British advertising and breakfast tables through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the Honey Monster is returning to UK TV screens this September as part of a £1 million investment by ‘his’ new owners, Yorkshire-based family business The Brecks Company. The Honey Monster hit UK screens on 3rd Sept - here’s how we made the film!
Director: Bethan Seller
Client: The Brecks Company
Brand Director: Gillian Clarke
Head of Production: Serena Fylan
Production Manager: Lianna Morris
Production Assistant: Abi Simpson
1st Assistant Director: Jean-paul Lebon
Director Of Photography: Shaun Atherton
Animation: Northforge Animation, Matt Simpson, Jim Hill
Air Date: 3rd Sept 2018
Making the magic happen...
Directed by Bethan Seller, the new TVC features an animated Honey Monster celebrating how Honey Monster Puffs bring a special kind of magic to breakfast time.
Bethan jumped at the opportunity to direct the Honey Monster’s TV comeback. As a kid she used to watch him clatter around the kitchen in a football shirt - never in a million years did she ever think she’d be involved in such an exciting project all these years later. Directing a shoot day with a big, bumbling yet, at that stage, invisible Honey Monster wasn’t actually as tricky as we were anticipating. Luckily we had a superstar actress, Elektra, whose imagination ran wild as she responded with such energy to the daunting empty room in front of her.
The masterful animators at Northforge, were at hand all-day to set realistic spatial boundaries: how much space would he take up, where was he in the room, and (more importantly) how much camera movement was needed to ensure there wouldn’t be a logistical animation nightmare. Northforge approached the GFX like a traditional cell animation, with every frame hand drawn.
Matt Simpson, Managing Director at Northforge commented on the technicalities of the animation:
"Due to the tight production timescales we worked on a 4-stage process and presented our work to the client every step of the way. Overlapping where we could, some team members painted and textured, while others continued to develop the roughs/cleanup frames of the Honey Monster character. As most of the commercial featured a fast moving/dancing Honey Monster, we had to hand draw nearly every frame. This meant painting over 350 frames x 4 (rough, cleanup, colour, texture) x 2 (once for the body, once for the head). As an animator it’s a bit of a dream to be asked to bring to life a character you've grown up with. So we were blown away by the opportunity to work with The Gate to bring the Honey Monster back to the screen. Robot food had made such a lovely job of the character that we knew we'd have to commit a lot of time and effort to make it happen. We're extremely proud of the results and can't wait to see the reaction to his new moves.”
