As we bid farewell to our friends from Creature London, and a lovely long stint of American debauchery, British mannerisms and some work mixed in between, it seems fitting to talk about how we decided to welcome them here in the first place.

With balloons.

In the UK, they’re called… well. Hmm. We never asked them what they call balloons. Shoot. We really were going to do that before they left. They probably call them something very clever. It’s probably way nicer-sounding than “balloons”.  In any case, we used them—balloons—to recreate both their nation’s flag and ours in the Creature 12th Avenue Storefront windows.

As the balloons slowly grew tired and flaccid, only stronger did the bond between ourselves and our 2 British + 1 Dutch compatriots grow. We closely observed their frequent bathroom habits, due presumably to their near-constant consumption of tea. Their manners are impeccable, or, at least, their accents are, which makes everything they do, including wearing wigs, performing Miley Cyrus’ smash hit "Party In The USA" in front of strangers, and frequently going to the bathroom, all a very elegant affair.

They enjoyed our not-fatness, our tendency to parade ourselves around at karaoke bars for their attention, and our strange sandwiches. (You can read about their experiences at their blog, http://jayraylangdon.tumblr.com.)

In all seriousness, the Creature exchange program, as we're starting to call it, is becoming less of a business necessity and more of a fantastically rewarding swap of ideas, laughs, ways of doing things, strange habits, and more permanently, pokes and email addresses and phone numbers and invitations.

And so. Until the next time, our friends across windows and oceans.

And also because you can build a tree out of them:


But as we've been diving into this business for the last month, I know there's a lot of work ahead of us. I'm incredibly proud of Creature right now, and we're all looking forward to a relationship with a brand that has so much to offer. It's time to put our Dickies on and get to work.
 
Look, we're already right at home in Fort Worth:

We wanted to view the world through a child’s sense of imagination and transform an everyday object into a symbol of this great festival. We’ll use a symbol ubiquitous with Seattle, and the time of year the festival owns: the umbrella. An umbrella is basic, functional and universal—but to a child it becomes a character, a vehicle, a playmate and muse. Through artful use of umbrella shapes, and playful interpretations of its function, we spun stories and scenes that capture the adventurous, joyful, imaginative spirit of the films themselves.

Creature brought on director Branson Veal at production company Unclebob.tv to craft these stories into a reality. Branson chose to combine live action, stop frame animation, utilizing children and colorful hand painted umbrellas to give each story the magic touch. With a bit of a nod to the French film Amelie, Creature & Unclebob.tv had original music scored for each spot. All of the spots were shot on location in Seattle.

Anyway, right before the holidays Creature took over the façade of the Chelsea district’s famous Maritime hotel to wow crowds with arresting visuals, perfect sound design and a fun HP-themed holiday show.

Start-to-finish, the entire process required a few grueling months, 3 different animation studios, 1 very cooperative client, 2 event production staffs and a lot of talented people.

We had the distinct pleasure of working with the esteemed Projection Mapping partner Drive Productions and look forward to working with them again.

Take a gander at the event video below and be sure to check back later in January for our “making of” documentary of the entire event.

On a side note, Pat Horn commandeered this glorious screen for a moment to propose to our own Kaylin. Very 4D and romantic. 

Also, Pat is convinced the Maritime is haunted. I think it’s just good marketing and part of their USP.

Here at Creature, we think about Champagne a lot. Not just because of Champagne Friday but also appropriately because we work for the Comité Champagne (The Champagne Bureau) with the glorious task of making sure people don’t inappropriately steal the name for their own devices.

As you all know, Champagne can only come from Champagne, France. Take heed, all you California sparkling wines. What we don’t have control over are the names the official Champagne houses give to their products. The case is illustrated here with DISCOBITCH. Yes, it is a fine Champagne. In fact on the back it even says it represents 300 years of heritage and passion. We have to thank our clients for this gift among many other fine Champagnes we will be sampling this Friday for our first Champagne Friday of 2012. And of course we’ll be launching our new campaign shortly. Cheers.

In the meantime, please enjoy the exact type of name abuse we are fighting against here.

If you are going to be in San Francisco tomorrow, stop by The Dieline Forum to hear Cullen discuss the "Worst Feedback Ever."  You will laugh, you will learn, and you will almost certainly hear a lot of curse words. Seriously though, it will be an incredibly insightful and interesting session.  

His speech focuses on "how to get through tough clients, bad feedback, and other meeting road blocks that are destroying your great ideas, wrecking your team's moral, and depriving the world of your general genius.  You'll walk out with a set of presentation techniques and tools to use starting the next day at work, as well as some bigger-picture ideas to aim for with the over-all vision of your work. And hopefully next time you hear the worst feedback you've ever gotten, you'll know what to do."

His session is at 9:00AM Thursday 11.3.11, then later that evening he'll be leading a panel to discuss "Masters in Creative Direction" at 5:00PM.  More info on The Dieline Forum can be found here.

If you can't make it, then don't fret, we'll be sure to post a video of his entire speech, so check back soon to watch!

This week, our 12th Avenue storefront has been transformed into a dandy little barbershop. And this Friday, it will be a fully operational one. Come by. Get a snazzy hairdo in a real old-timey barber chair while pedestrians gawk at you. It'll be fun.