The End of the Stop-Motion Doughboy
Since his debut in the mid-1960s, the Pillsbury Doughboy was brought to life through stop-motion animation. However, in 1992, it was decided to change the technique to CGI. It was my pleasure to animate the Doughboy for his final stop-motion commercial campaign at Apogee Inc., for the Leo Burnett advertising agency. A couple of commercials were created simultaneously under the direction of effects legend John Dykstra, and I was chosen to animate one of them, which had a Christmas theme. The budget for the project was clearly high, as they offered me more than my normal pay rate. Of course, they also expected the highest quality animation possible in return. I was given a luxurious amount of time to do tests and experiment with the character's performance, which was far from the norm of a typical stop-motion shoot.