I found the below theater opener on a demo reel at John Lemmon films by a person who worked for Bigman Pictures. The animation was used before feature films in different theater chains. Specifically the animation was done by Woo Art for National Amusements Multiplex Cinemas. Recently the lead animator "who wants to be kept secret" wrote us and gave these specifics about the piece:

"John Donnelly of Bigman Pictures was DP for the piece, but it was produced by Woo Art International in New York City for National Amusements Multiplex Cinemas. Their parent company was Viacom, and so MTV acted as a kind of creative interface between National Amusements and Woo Art."

"For the record, the title of the piece was "Sony". Not sure of the spelling, but the character's name was supposed to be Sony, (sounds like sunny). I drew the boards that got the piece awarded, the art direction, led a small team of sculptors, served as assistant camera, designed all the rigging and effects, and animated the whole thing. It was just a single (large) pane of glass I had on a track that I slid back and forth between exposures interposed between the camera and the animation table."

"That was how I handled the majority of the flying stuff, but in one or two places there were a couple of things that I also flew on wires above the puppet at the same time, as well as using a boom poking out through the curtain and hidden behind the character throughout the entire piece to help him bounce up and down and also help out with all the props at the end."

"As far as I know Woo Art still exists, but to my knowledge this was their one and only clay animation. They were mostly into print and motion graphics at that time and I think afterwords they got into live action music video production along with whatever else."