Why?

Because 1 million dollars and Super Bowl-level exposure is at stake!

In addition, this year they are adding the opportunity to create a commercial with The Lonely Island! So you can imagine how competitive this contest is, and this year is no exception. Browse the gallery to get an idea of what’s out there, but you might have to do a lot of hunting to find the gems, but there are some really good ones. You can see all the finalists from the past here.

Here’s how the contest works:

• Judges will select the top 5 entries and announce them the beginning of January

• These 5 will receive $25k and a trip to the Super Bowl

• A public vote will determine one winner from these 5

• This one winner will be run as an advertisement for Doritos during this year’s Super Bowl

• If that winner’s commercial is chosen by USA Today (newspaper) as the best Super Bowl commercial, either on USA Today’s facebook page or using their AdMeter system, Dorito’s will give that winner 1 million dollars. If they are second then $600k, and third is $400k.

So 1 million dollars seems like a long shot, right?

Well, it is and it isn’t. Out of the 5 years they have operated this contest they have awarded the million dollar prize twice!

I have entered this contest two years ago, you can see that unsuccessful entry here. This year I didn’t want to hold back so after a mild brain aneurysm I thought of a decent idea, ran it by my friend Eric, who made it even better, then I started storyboarding it.

Let me apologize in case you're incredibly intimidated by the unmitigated talent I display at drawing stick figures, I can't help it. Also, it's pricey, but not a bad app for your iPhone, this cinemek thingy.

Then I began designing my dinosaur! I wanted a velociraptor so I did a litte research and rewatched Jurassic Park 1 and 2 for design, as well as reference for the animation. After creating the base mesh in Maya, I used Zbrush to finish off the model:

I am concurrently trying to finish up my student short film, so I didn’t have a ton of time for this project. For example, after I got the base mesh for the dinosaur done, I spent one day and completely finished modeling, texturing, and rigging this character. It was the fastest I’ve been able to work on anything, I think, just because of the time constraint I placed on myself. For that same reason, I feel I could have done better with some more time.

Also, to be efficient with my time, both dinosaurs are the exact same rig and model. Therefore, my one constraint, besides simplicity, was to make the rig scalable.

For animation, I tackled the hardest shot first, the bench ejector one, and I’m glad I did, because it made the other shots seem much easier. I also got the help of a classmate for the compositing of this commercial, thanks Marco!

I shot this commercial with my trusty Canon 7D. If you have any other questions, just make a comment below – thanks for watching!

You can watch it below or go to Dorito’s website and watch it there, so then you can see my competition afterwards:

For comparison, here’s last years contest winner, who won one-million dollars:

To view and make comments on the actual contest page, this is the direct link to my video there: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/video/1445

I had a lot of help getting this all together. Thanks to Kurt, Diana, and Pablo for being extras. Thanks to Yuki for her stellar performance. Thanks to Eric and Scott for managing the sound and camera. David and Eric S. for their creative support. Most importantly, thanks to Angela, my wife, for being a crucial part in this entire process, doing such a great job in the commercial, and putting up with me pursuing these random projects.

If you want to see some of the competition, Jared Cicon’s blog HERE, or check out some really bizarre ones that ‘Beardy’ compiled over at his site HERE.

I’ll know around the end of December if I was picked as one of the six finalists. Then it is on to public voting for the top 3…

This was the first project where I used my Canon 7D. I really liked it, but I wish I had used the ‘Faithful’ image mode, or whatever you call it. It’s where you can set the contrast and saturation within the camera. I used a custom setting I found on a website, and I think it would work well if poorly lit situations, unlike mine where I had it lit properly. It basically flattened out the image too much I think. I think you can really notice it in the first shot of the commercial. Not that big of a deal, but something to learn from.

To do this one I used Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. I color graded with Magic Bullet Looks in AE, which I really enjoy that plug-in. The two lenses I have and used was the EFS 15mm to 85mm and a Nikon with an adapter so it would fit the camera (so no autofocus, which I don’t use for video anyways) that was 50mm and f/1.8 to get a nice bokeh effect.

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