Earlier this year I worked on a Honda commercial that featured hockey stars Nicklas Lidstrom and Corey Perry.  In the spot, the athletes leave the sports arena and head to their Honda Pilot.  Once inside, they are shocked to find hundreds of hats falling (as happens when an athlete scores a hat trick; 3 goals) on their car, out of nowhere.  They deduce that the fans approve of their choice in vehicle, as neither of them had scored a hat trick that night.  As a stinger, an octopus is the last to fall on their windshield, which apparently is some kind of inside joke.

Here’s the storyboards:

This was pretty straightforward.  I enjoy drawing athletes, due to the dynamic poses found in sports, but in this case it was more like drawing celebrities, since the drawings had to have a likeness, and that’s often challenging.  I also enjoy drawing cars because they look fairly impressive in my current rendering style.  I’ve had to draw the Honda Pilot on a few commercials, so I was familiar with the design.

But what was really interesting about this project was that I used Skype to communicate with the director.  Since it was a new client, it was very helpful to use the video chat function to get that personal connection and gain his trust.  And I also used the screen sharing technique to show the director my rough sketches as I was drawing them.  That was surprisingly helpful since he was able to give me instant feedback.  It can be stressful to have a director “looking over your shoulder” as you draw, but in the end it saves valuable time.  So thanks to these newfangled technologies we were able to work really well together.

So here’s the finished commercial.  The boards match pretty well, although I can see now that the director adjusted the angles to create a more voyeuristic/docu/candid feel.  They may have intended this to seem like a “viral” video…I didn’t know they wanted that, but now that I see it, it works for the spot.