Rob's Room: Zeller's Batman Commercial circa 1988

This post is for traditional animation fans! These are once again floating around on social media, so I figured I'd delve a bit deeper.  While the Batman designs are obviously Brian Bolland's "The Killing Joke," the acting is "Totally 80's, dude."

Compiled from a number of sources including Canadian Animation Resources, John Celestri's blog (AMAZING stuff here!), Ty Templeton's blog, and the YouTube.

In John Celestri's words:

I animated them back in 1988 under unusual circumstances. For those who don't know, Zellers is a Canadian nation-wide clothing store chain. At that time, the Batman franchise was heating up and the first Batman live action feature was heading toward the theaters. I was asked to animate the commercials, but I did not live anywhere near the studio that was producing it, so we settled on my drawing at home and faxing the drawings in to the studio. Yes, I said faxing each and every one of my drawings.  

Also, these drawings were all done on 8.5 x 11 inches photocopy paper...not the standard sized studio animation paper (10.5 x 12 inches)

Joker:

Joker Running Pencil Test:

Catwoman:

Riddler:

Penguin (in French):

Credits on the four commercials:  

Producer (Lightbox): Mary Ellen Young 

Producer (Agency): Johnny Chambers 

Direction: Greg Duffell 

Layout: Ty Templeton, Les Waller, Ennis McNulty, Greg Duffell 

Animation: Gian Franco(John)Celestri and Keith Nicholson assisted by Ramon Hui, Mary Ellen Young, Monica Kim 

Backgrounds: Les Waller, Gary Cooper