Bucktoothed Bandits
Directed by Framestore Pictures’ Murray Butler with Andy Rowan-Robinson, YellaWood’s rag-tag beaver ensemble continue their attempts to secure pressure treated pine in the brand’s newest campaign ‘Bucktoothed Bandits.’ The project marks the third partnership between Framestore and Brunner for YellaWood since first creating the five unique beaver personalities in 2019, cementing their role as YellaWood’s brand icons.
The campaign features the colony of beavers getting up to their usual antics, focusing on physical comedy and humor in play. The spots add a human element as the beavers begin to move their focus to suburban homes that utilize YellaWood brand pressure treated pine.
“The creative team did a wonderful job in shifting the focus to a down-to-earth context, but maintaining that exuberance and fun that the Beavers encapsulate,” Murray explains. “The thread of humor from the initial campaign to this one feels intact, and my goal was to keep the visuals elevated and push the comedy where it felt right to do so.”
Jon Burke led the Framestore animation team who brought the beavers to life, not only executing exemplary animation, but also adding nuances – like Eager Beaver’s legs shaking as he panics to keep frozen – to the characters' performances to further add to the humor.
“While each spot had their own creative challenges – such as creating a squirrel who unfurls upon being thrown like a ball, to effects that pointed to gags but didn’t give the joke away too early, or creating a Beaver Village background from scratch – the team utilized creative and innovative approaches to tackle each,” Burke explained. “It can be challenging to balance the cartoon nature of these characters and their personalities with the reality-driven environments and stories, but this harmony was kept in balance with all three spots.”
“It was so much fun bringing our Beavers to life!” said Rowan-Robinson. “Each of the three spots is unique, which made brainstorming and concepting ideas with Murray a lot of fun. There are so many nuances between each beaver’s reaction in every situation. There was such a great sense of collaboration right out of the gate with YellaWood and Brunner, which carried all the way through the edit, animation and final stretches of the post work.”
Since the beavers first appeared in ‘The Woodland's Most Wanted’ in 2019, the lovable characters have been used in social media assets, in-store promotions, and billboard installations.