Smuack!: digital experimentation for advertising

Founded by Juan Tomicic and with offices in Madrid and Luxembourg, this digital experimentation workshop has reached an agreement with Estudio Picapalo, specialized in filming effects. Creatives and filmmakers are already working with the new advertising codes of new media, such as the Internet and mobile phones.

A place to investigate new technologies applied to advertising creation, where the study of new advertising approaches and languages ​​has a place and where creatives, digital natives, can develop their full potential with state-of-the-art equipment. This is the dream that Juan Tomicic has just captured in Smuack!, a workshop whose objective will be to offer the advertising industry a new concept in the creation of pieces with visual and graphic effects for media such as television, cinema and the Internet.

Tomicic has a recognized career as a professional linked to advertising production and visual effects, a sector in which he has created numerous companies throughout his long career, such as Daiquiri Digital Pictures, HD SpainBox, User T38, Serena Digital. He began his career as a special effects assistant for the film State of Siege, by Costa Gavras to join as a special effects assistant for the musician Alice Cooper's shows. Shortly after, he joined René Steichen's team as a producer of programs and spots at RTL Productions, in Luxembourg. He later signed as artistic director of Telson and then K2000. He was also the promoter, along with Manu Horrillo and Adela Pla, of Daiquiri Digital Pictures, where he made numerous pieces, one of them, the header of the Barcelona Olympics (today in the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía). He has participated in numerous award-winning productions at Cannes. With the Alaris spot in 2000, made by Víctor García, he won first prize at the Inmagina Festival in Monte Carlo. Among other awards, he was also awarded a Goya for best special effects for The day of the beast, by Alex de la Iglesia.

Madrid-Luxembourg

Smuack! promotes a new way of understanding advertising, effective and fast, which is making its way not only due to the advertiser's need to adjust their advertising investments, but also due to the growing strength that new media, such as the Internet and mobile telephony, are experiencing, and where creative development has not yet reached the levels of quality typical of television.

The new experimentation workshop, however, mixes the most cutting-edge technology with other more traditional ones, so that from the sum of all of them a new global concept is born.

Smuack! will use the facilities of the current Picapalo headquarters in Madrid, after an agreement reached for their joint operation. The special effects experience of Jorge Alsina, owner of Picapalo, closes the creative circle of Smuack! with the incorporation of more organic artisanal techniques that complement the synthetic image,

In addition to the Madrid studies, Smuack! It will have commercial offices in Luxembourg. Currently, he is doing work for Luxair, the airline company of this country, and for the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce.

Graphic and visual design, as the protagonist of Smuack!'s work, allows for unlimited creativity and a great capacity for differentiation compared to the traditional spot. It involves the development of enriched images to create a direct language, which is based on symbolic elements with the capacity to transmit modernity and differentiation with respect to the classic spot, both for television and for the Internet.

Shoot for the Network

Filming for the Internet is another of Smuack!'s fields of experimentation. The visual language derived from the use of effects or motion graphics has a great capacity for penetration and development in new media, where advertising creativity can be shown in a fresher way. Among the most used techniques that are adaptable to new media is animation through Stop Motion.

This way of producing not only consists of the escape from the aesthetics of the traditional advertisement, but also aims to adopt a language designed for new media and users and in which, paradoxically, there is also a place for artisanal techniques typical of the special effects traditionally used in cinema.

A different language, a conceptual staging, closer to the symbol than the real image, constitutes the true bridge of advertising towards new viewers, who are no longer satisfied exclusively with television and have shifted their audiovisual consumption towards the Internet, mobile telephony and video consoles. It is precisely this value, spectacularity, one of the factors that is contributing the most to the virality of online campaigns.

The Smuack! team It is made up of creatives and filmmakers capable of interpreting in all media. The Internet has another audiovisual language, and in the same way that a new concept of “viewer” and new forms of advertising have emerged, a new way of narrating is also being developed. Thus emerges the 3.0 filmmaker, specialized in the web as a means of communication, a professional who was born with the computer and the Internet already developed and who has had access to very high-level creative tools since he began to develop his talent.