STP Motor Oil

Content

In this commercial, STP engine oil is compared to the US Cavalry. It defends every time an attacked engine against nasty elements such as mud, moisture, heat and cold.

Trivia

This film dates far before the inventionof 3D computer animation. That lack presented a considerable technical challenge to its realisation. Amorphous mass had to be animated: ‘mud’ ‘fire’, ‘ice’, ‘dirt’. This required a special technique of this film.
It was a good idea to represent these pollutants as characters. But the different shapes and textures within one shot also required a thoughtful approach.

• The Dirt figure was made entirely in foam rubber, containing a wire skeleton of aluminium.
• The Fire figure was copied as a (cartoon) double shot between the puppets. The puppet animator had to take into account the space for the fire-male.
• The Ice figure is fairly transparent in the original (colour) film and was therefore made out of transparent silicone rubber. This was a stiff material, difficult to animate.
• The Mud figure was again made entirely out of foam rubber.

No more Dollywood

Given the production year of this film, around 1977, this animation was made after the Dollywood studios had gone bankrupt. A much slimmed-down team of contributors made a restart with Marten Toonder's comic book studio. The correct name is therefore Joop Geesink Filmproducties C.V.  The correct name of the producer is therefore Joop Geesink Filmproducties C.V. (Limited Partnership).

Because the studio now only had one art director, Henk Kabos, it is almost certain that he was the image director. Cor Icke was a regular animator, but part-timer Pieter Merkx would also have been a good candidate here to realise this relatively technical animation. The puppets and sets were then made by a few people: Harry Tolsma, Ton Foederer and Theo Doreleijer.
For this client, another commercial was made within this concept, STP - Squadron (1975). The quality of the available image deteriorated considerably as an old, analogue videotape was digitised. This is shown below.