Psyop Workshop in Cannes 2009 - where skin wins over execution.

Psyop - you know them - they're world famous for creating amazing animations for advertising, had a workshop in cannes Wednesday 24 June titled: Blurring The Line Between Art And Commerce In Advertising. Their best-known piece is probably Happiness Factory for Coke out of W+K Amsterdam that won a silver lion last year and appeared in the 2007 Super Bowl. When I heard they were doing a workshop, I was interested in learning more about who they are, what they do, and how they do it.

The workshop was headed up by Psyop Managing Partner Justin Booth-Clibborn and Marie Hyon and Marco Spier both Founders and Creative Directors at Psyop. The workshop began with a little bit about who they are this may be best shown in their anthem spot which they created to define themselves, their anthem. They then then went on to dissect a few of their best works including the beautiful Crow for MTV HD (www.psyop.tv/mtvhd), the paper doll cutout music video for Converse , Fantaand their latest for Milk. They shared with the delegates what goes into a job, how they pitch it and their design process. They went into the most detail on the Milk Sad Princess spot and it's really amazing at how much work goes into creating animated water - something like 28 layers to make it look real.

In the last 30-45 minutes of their workshop, the workshop bit began. Delegates dived into groups, given a number of magazines, poster board, sharpie markers, scissors and glues sticks, and were told to come up with a concept or story inspired by the music. The music was "Thank you for Being a Friend" (yes, the theme from TVs The Golden Girls, egad!). They didn't wnat to make things easy. Groups, composed of people from all other the globe, who did not know each other, began to frantically work together to get this task done. The prize to the winning group would be Psyop books, which are not yet released.

The groups came up with some great ideas - the most impressive to me was the group who did a stop-motion piece utilizing their digital camera. In the end the team that used sex to sell, they had a Playboy magazine to work with, were the winners of the day. Figures.