Posts Tagged ‘nissin’

Freedom’s 6th television commercial starts airing on Japan TV today, so I can show some screencaps from the clip. The theme music is again Utada Hikaru’s “Kiss & Cry”, the single is slated for release later in August. We started working on this about a month ago, shortly after we finished Freedom episode 4. Its the first time the audience get to see Takeru and Bis on earth and the lush greenery is a nice change from the colder colour palette used in Eden.

You can watch the full clip from Freedom’s website here.

And now for a little production trivia. Which part of the animation was 3D and which was 2D ? ( excluding backgrounds, dust effects and water ) Is it…

1) Everything is 3D. Period.
2) Only the vehicle is 3D, the rest are hand drawn.
3) Only the vehicle and the 2 characters are 3D, the bison are hand drawn.
4) Everything is hand drawn.

Anyone ? :]

ps Please read this post for the previous (5th ) Freedom Cup Noodle Commercial.

Takeru graces the lid of a Nissin Cup Noodle, illustrated by Sajiki-san. In Japanese it says “Mobile item get campaign”, to spare you a splitting headache from trying to figure out what that means its basically a promotion for a chance to win some Freedom merchandise by accessing Nissin’s website using your mobile phone. I’ve known this to exist for quite a while now but its the first time I’ve actually bought one that came with the contest form attached.

The earlier campaigns featured the Otomo Katsuhiro illustrated Takeru ( the image I have on my sidebar ) which had Freedom fans eating insane volumes of Cup ramen just to collect it.

Meanwhile at work Freedom 4 is finally completed after slogging 18 hours daily on fine-tunes for the past few days. *Minor spoilers ahead* This episode must be the most hilarious so far with Takeru and Bisu’s misadventures on earth. We’ve also spruced up the opening sequence, I can’t show any images as yet but stay tuned for more updates.

The 2nd series of magazine ad spreads for the release of Freedom 3, illustrated by Sakiji-san. See the first series here.

Freedom’s official English (US) website is up here :

http://www.bandaivisual.us/freedom/

Just as I suspected they have completely removed all Nissin Cup Noodles elements; check out this previous post here. As far as spiffiness of web design is concerned, the Japan site is definitely the much better of the two.

Screen caps from Freedom’s 5th television commercial, airing on Japanwide TV from today on. ( 20th April ) You can watch it from Freedom’s website by following the link below :

http://freedom-project.jp/?filenumber=4018

The theme song for this spot was initially Utada Hikaru’s “Flavour of Life”, but was changed during production to her latest single, “Kiss and Cry”. In any case, I love both the songs.

Cover art for Freedom 3.

Its confirmed: Freedom Project will be seeing its US release on the 26th of June 2007, with both DVD and HD DVD versions to be made available. I’m wondering how the entire marketing campaign for the US version will turn out should they remove the Nissin Cup Noodles elements, ( Freedom been a huge tie up animation project with the giant noodle company Nissin, a ubiquitious, household name here in Japan but probably not in the states, making it somewhat irrelevant ) but I hope it turns out catchy in any case.

I’ve just gotten word from my chief Matsui-san that we will be working on the fifth installment of Freedom Project’s television commercial which will be aired Japanwide. The past 4 spots have been done by our friends from Production IG ( Ghost In the Shell folks ) because we had to concentrate on the actual animation series. The theme song for the commercial by the way, is Utada Hikaru’s latest single released just last week, The Flavor of Life, cover picture below.

We have been working straight 15 hour days here at Sunrise rushing the deadline for Freedom 3 and barely have enough time to take a piss, but this is exciting news, well, at least to a huge Utada fan.

Designs for 2 separate full page ad spreads now appearing in various Japan magazines for the release of Freedom II, marvel comics style. Sajiki-san, our most talented illustrator, referenced old copies of Akira graphic novels previously published by Epic comics and emulated a smilar inking style. Sweet.

The ending credits for Freedom. That’s me right there ! See it ? No ?

My apologies…i’m just this excited little bloke.

Those were some screencaps off the 4th 30 second spot for Freedom now playing on Japanese television. You can also catch it streaming from the official Freedom website here.

Happy New Year folks !

Working 12 hour days is becoming the norm as the deadline for Freedom 2 draws closer, and with the animators finishing up their scenes work is piling up as they get passed on to us for lighting and rendering. Just last friday we had first look at the 30 second spot for Freedom 2 that will be up on Japan TV soon, and it feels great to be involved in a project that is always on air, at least for the better part of the next 2 years until Freedom Project concludes with episode 7. Crunch time has barely started.

I’ve not had any decent chance to watch films the past few months, but with me settling down pretty comfortably at work now I really want to make up for lost time. Its time to get back to the source.