Just bumped into this commercial from back in the day: it’s the Compaq Bird!

(Quicktime)

Excellent rhythm in this one. The character of the bird is communicated in the first few frames, in the way it stands up straight and looks around. Jolly good form!

The eye is led around the frame (feature animator Kevin Koch calls it shot flow) in a sneakily pleasing zig-zag, with setups and change-ups in a one-two punch. E.g.: bird looks under flower pot, then under flower. Hooray!

This trick is a lot tighter than the typical one-one-two setup, known as “third time lucky,” which is the basic bar-joke pattern. That trick is cute too — Musicotherapie uses it to good effect, viz. the Ostrich egg-eating gag, and the Anteater egg-hatching gag. But it’s simpler and more laid-back, as was appropriate for Musicotherapie’s tone and style. You don’t have to be particularly quick (or sober) to get it. The Compaq Bird, however — he’s on a mission, he cuts to the chase, just like AltaVista.

Apparently AltaVista was a search engine. Those were the days, so I hear.

Compaq “Bird” was designed and directed by Londoner Grant Orchard for Studio aka in 2000. Grant doesn’t seem to have a site but he’s been featured on Lumen Elipse, the art display over the newstand kiosk in Harvard Square. The online feature includes a cute interview.

The song is “Donkey Rhubarb” by Aphex Twin from 1995.

Update: of the bird, Kevin Koch notes:

…despite the frantic pace and the constantly changing backgrounds and perspectives, the bird is easy to follow because the animator has kept the character right in the sweet spot, in the center of the screen. You feel like the bird is all over the screen, but it’s not, so the cuts work even when there’s a huge change in perspective and so on from shot to shot. Play the clip with your finger over the bird, and you realize why it’s pretty clear.

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