Chuck Gammage - Blog Posts

Back in August of ‘97, I was working at George Elliott’s first animation studio: 'PICTOR Entertainment'. I was likely working as either a Designer or a Layout artist, on one of the many series we did service work for. But one day George asked me if I could also pull Layout duties on a "Denny’s Restaurant” TV spot that local legend animator Chuck Gammage was working on, for ‘Colossal Pictures’? I’d never worked on a TV commercial before, but was certainly game to give it a try!

As memory serves, I got the storyboards from Chuck on a Friday,-- and completed the layouts over a long weekend. There weren’t any designs for the 30-second “Skillet Breakfasts” spot. But Chuck mentioned that he wanted the BG’s to be styled after the classic “Tom & Jerry” cartoons of the 1940′s..

Before I even got started, I got word that 2 of the 6 BG’s were being cut for time. Less work for me.. YAY!!  For the remaining 4, I tried to follw the staging that appeared in the storyboards, as closely as possible.. As you can see from the final ad,-- although many of the design elements were retained, all of my Layouts got changed at the Paint stage. Which if my memory serves, were beautifully painted by: Branislav Perkovic.

The only other initial instruction I recall getting from Chuck, was that he’d wanted the dog to chase the cat repeatedly around the Kitchen, at the start. He’d asked for a few extreme Foreground elements in silhouette, which weren’t in the board panels..  I chose to forego that idea, because I couldn’t think of way to make it work..  Chuck Gammage had worked as an animator on Richard Williams’ 1988 “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” feature. And I think he may have wanted to try and recreate some of the crazy chase elements that appeared in that Kitchen? As you can see by the screengrabs, the pair only run thru it once, without doing any of the elaborate laps in the storyboard..

In the end,-- I think everyone’s contributions helped create a fantastic-looking classic 90′s-era animated commercial, that still holds up to repeated viewing.. You can watch it (and judge for yourself), by clicking here!