Quentin "Mr. Oizo" Dupieux and his famous puppet creation "Flat Eric".
I've mentioned Flat Eric a few times before (my previous posts here and here are two past mentions that spring to mind), but I've never said much about his human creator, Mr. Oizo.
"Mr. Oizo" is actually the pseudonym of French film director and music producer Quentin Dupieux. Flat Eric is based on a puppet called Stephane that Dupieux and a friend created for one of his early short films. The character was recycled for a series of Dupieux-directed Levi's commercials in Europe that featured Dupieux's music. One of the original concepts for the commercials was that the puppet would be run over by a truck. The concept was dropped, but the nickname "Flat Eric" stuck because Levi's ad agency felt it was a more international name than Stephane, which they thought was too French.
The version of the puppet seen in the Levi's ads and subsequent videos was built by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. An interesting anecdote about the puppet is that after the first version of it "looked too much like Kermit (the Frog)", Dupieux had the workshop build Flat Eric several times over until he was satisfied with the final product, which retained the homemade charm of the original Stephane puppet (I love the little yellow guy, but to look at him you'd never assume it was the Creature Shop that built him).
You can read an interview from 1999 with Dupieux about his Flat Eric success here. There's also a little more info on Flat Eric available on the Muppet Wiki. If you want to see some of the Flat Eric commercials and videos, search YouTube for "Flat Eric".
