Working with McCann Erickson was a creatively free experience and a great opportunity to partner in a non-traditional style. The client was looking to lift the results from their previous campaign by splitting the information shown into three simpler spots.
Working from Origami books and reference, we began to design the card sculptures that would represent real life props such as frying pans, plates and cake stands. This was a fun process, working with real paper and card to fully understand how these sculptures might work in real life.
At the same time we worked closely with food director Michael Schrom. We previsualised the spots in order to create hero framing for all the food sections. We needed to create 'appetite appeal', the buzz word of the spots, for each of the four food items being shown. We then looked at the timings to bring the spots together as we only had 15 seconds to travel through each scene and I didn't want the camera to have to fly around. The goal was to keep as much of a rostrum camera feel as possible. In this way we gathered lots of reference from the live action shoot, and re-created that table top set in the CG lighting scenes.
Simultaneously we were working on the look development of the card sculptures in CG. We needed to pay specific attention to the branding, to ensure it was represented well throughout the spots, while also creating a nice balance of blank cardboard to add realism.
The animators were rigging and animating on the fly, adding extra folding sections in order blend between the different props. Once the timing was down, they would go over the spots with a twitch, buckle and 2's pass to add some of the hand made nuance of real stop motion.
The final results look fantastic, provide all the information, and take the viewer on a mini journey on the way.