Inspired by the viral success of their Only Slightly Exaggerated campaign in 2018, Travel Oregon partnered again with Wieden + Kennedy and Psyop to tell part two of this magical tale.
With the creative learnings from the first film, directors Todd & Kylie with animation partners Sun Creature pushed up the dial on the fantasy this round. With more breathtaking vistas and fantastical creatures, hovering just in the liminal space between imagination and reality, Travel Oregon is at once a loving homage to Oregon and a celebration of that exhilarating feeling all travelers experience of the sublime places they carry back in their memories and hearts.
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“We had such a wonderful and successful collaboration with Sun Creature and Wieden + Kennedy last year on our Travel Oregon film and it was exciting to rekindle those fires for a second time. This year we were able to launch right into creative development and production because we already had a solid working methodology road tested from the previous year. As well as traveling through some of the beautiful Oregon landscapes we really wanted to expand on the magic and whimsy. We were able to create some great mythical creatures: a rocky turtle island that controls the rising sun, an old bathing tree that feeds the bees, a furry beast that enjoys feasting on doughnuts and majestic cloud giants. It was, once again, an amazing collaboration of incredibly talented artists pouring their passion into every frame and it shows.”
How do you rain death, doom and destruction on history’s most reviled baddie? Sun Creature pushes the absurd with Headless directors Victor and Alfredo for Netflix’s Black Mirror-esq collection of NSFW animated shorts – Love, Death and Robots. Jello molds, robot armies and sex orgies – nothing is out of the question when it comes to taking down the Führer.
“Alternate Histories” crams a lot into seven-and-a-half minutes, and the fact that it does so with such ridiculous bite is a testament to directors Victor Maldonado and Alfredo Torres, here collaborating with Sun Creature Studio and regular series writer Philip Gelatt. It’s proof that Love, Death & Robots is at its finest when it’s short, sweet and satirically nasty.”
-Daily Beast
In “Plain,” for Greek dairy company, Fage, Psyop was forced to rethink its pipeline when they discovered they would only be allotted two short weeks of post-production time. By approaching most of the shots in-camera and integrating CG only when absolutely necessary, the team of artists rose to the challenge and created a piece that is not only hauntingly beautiful, but a testament to their ingenuity. – Motionographer
“Everybody is an artist, everybody can be creative. That is the spirit that we wanted to capture in our spot. It should look easy, effortless, like it was made in somebody’s closet. Pure right brain stuff. It should inspire you to grab your camera and shoot your own paper world.”
-Director Marie Hyon
With the help of Blizzard Entertainment, Golden Wolf powered up the Overwatch League Grand Finals with an epic series of team spots featuring players moving through cities and larger-than-life manifestations of their team mascots and logos.
When Riot approached Sun Creature on an action-packed series of films for League of Legends, the team knew they needed to create something that felt authentic to the close-knit gamer fan base – a group that never shies from voicing an opinion.
Knowing that each script called for dynamic action, they brought on director Maremi Watanabe for her unique voice within this narrative style. They then surrounded her with a team of specialized artists who knew the genre inside and out from a character designer who played LOL on his off hours (which were woefully few during the intense production) to a Japanese studio who helped choreograph the cinematography.
The end result: non-stop action, swerving camera moves, a few cheeky winks and some very gorgeous films.
“We can’t believe this is Kevin’s 4th year celebrating the holidays with us! Every year these spots seem to get bigger and bigger but certainly we seem to have blown the roof off this one. Regardless of the challenges, these spots are a total blast to make. We get to design, build, and film these incredible sets. Then we get to take the footage home and bring Kevin and his family into it all.
I can’t overstate how much we like this exact pipeline of comping CG animation into cinematography. Being able to work with the real world lighting in CG just makes everything look so dang good. The camera moves were particularly tricky this year around. In fact the camera kept smashing into the food and at one point there was potatoes and gravy dripping off the lens. The AC was none too happy. Another tricky bit on this one was the way the main display of food came down into the set. We basically had 200 lbs of a double decker six foot wide platter of food descend into the shot on ropes. Again, the gravy really didn’t want to cooperate. I just can’t stop imagining what Kevin’s going to get up to next year!”
Todd Mueller, Director
Now 3 holiday seasons in the running, Todd & Kylie helped turn Christmas’s arguably most unremarkable vegetable – the carrot – into a beloved ambassador for Aldi Supermarkets across the UK. First introduced in 2017, audiences watched as the plucky little carrot met Santa and over the years, found true love, had a family and, most recently, defied an evil parsinip.
Made into an adorable plushy, Kevin rose to rock star status last holiday season, inciting Black Friday levels of chaos as holiday shoppers fought to get their hands on one. How’s that for naughty and nice?
“We fell in love with this project from the very moment we saw it. Come on, a carrot who wants to meet Santa… What’s not to like? We knew that this was a spot for a grocery store so we weren’t going to be able just to stay focused on the carrot. We had to show the big Christmas spread and have as much appetizing food photography as possible. Ideally you want every shot to do one thing perfectly, we didn’t have that luxury. In nearly every shot we need to tell the story and showcase the food. That being said we couldn’t be more thrilled with the way it came out. Our goal with everything we direct is get the viewers to feel something. Not exactly an easy thing to do inside sixty seconds. In any case, hopefully people will come away feeling some Christmas spirit.”
We created this piece as the official trailer for the 2011 Sonoma International Film Festival. Meet Tipsy, a puppeteered wine bottle character enhanced with photo real animation that sings about the film festival in Sonoma. He loves film. He loves good food. And he loves to drink – a little too much.
In May 2012, an Airbnb guest, Cathrine, told us a powerful story of a trip she took to Berlin with her father, Jörg, a Berlin Wall guard at the height of the Cold War. She wanted to show him the vibrant city Berlin had become, but it was the man they met at their Airbnb apartment that changed everything for Jörg.
AWARDS
WEBBY AWARDS – “Best Online Animation (Branded)” – People’s Choice Winner
D&AD Awards – “Animation For Film Advertising” – Graphite Pencil
ADC Awards – “Advertising, Digital & Motion” – Bronze Cube
AICP Awards – “Best Animated Advertisement” – Winner
Shorty Awards – “Multi-Platform Campaign” – Finalist
PRESS
Ad Age: How Airbnb Brought Two Berlin Wall Border Guards Back Together – Lodging Website Uses True Story to Illustrate the Power of its Brand
Mashable: Airbnb Turns a Touching Berlin Wall Anniversary Story Into Ad Campaign
Adweek: VCCP, Airbnb Animated By Cold War Memories
Campaign: World’s Talking About Wall and Chain
Brandingmag: Airbnb Breaks Down Walls While Opening Up Doors
INC: What Airbnb Can Teach You About Content Strategy
Contently: How Airbnb Is Using Content Marketing To Stay On Top
“It’s been five years since Psyop made their mark on the industry with Happiness Factory — the high flying, CG fable that defined a commercial genre they helped to create. If it’s not broke, then don’t fix it, and once more, the studio plays with the textbook devices that make Psyop distinctively Psyop. In their latest work, magical imagery and a wizardry of craft assure that Enchanted Forest stands shoulder to shoulder aside a long line of Psyop classics.”
“FedEx touts its low emission vehicles and sustainability efforts with a nicely produced spot out of BBDO NY and Smuggler/Psyop. Set in an enchanted forest with a deep-voiced narrator, the spot tells the story of how a shipping giant befriended a forest. Forest backplates were created with live-action with lighting drawn from that, and then integrated with animation.”
Moved by color and motion, Psyop and McKinney bring consumers along a epic journey of exploration through bold and beautiful shades from Sherwin-Williams’ Emerald Paint Collection. The team looked to fine art for inspiration, drawing from Mark Rothko and Georgia O’Keeffe as inspirations.
To craft this piece which features sharp, vivid footage of paint flowing through water at varying pressures and speeds, we teamed up with self proclaimed “visual engineers” The Marmalade. While watching the final product, most would insist that there’s nothing natural about the way the paint moves so seamlessly throughout this spot as if choreographed, but Director Eben Mears and Lead Compositor Evan Schoonmaker break it down below by giving some inside thoughts on the process of how “Epiphany” came to be.
Eben Mears, Director: I’ve tried to work with the people at The Marmalade for the last two years. This job was an absolute dream come true! Repeat work from the folks at McKinney meant we got to work with The Marmalade and with their high speed robot “Spike”. They have their own software, which looks like Nuke / Flame but for controlling cameras and EFX gear. So everything in the spot is shot! A perfectly orchestrated camera moves through paint, which was a ton of fun! Their tech and our creative brought the work to a whole new level!
Evan Schoonmaker, Lead Compositor: From conception you could see that this spot was meant to push boundaries, both technically and artistically. This was a great opportunity to work alongside a group we’ve had our eye on for some time; The Marmalade and Effective Team. This was the Marmalade’s first production at their beautiful new studio, and this was our first time doing flame on set.
Testing with the Marmalade and using the Phantom for even the initial rounds allowed us to walk into the prelight with a working test edit. Having Flame on set meant that as we shot I could give real-time feedback from compositing all the way back to camera without slowing production. It allowed us to avoid potentially steppy time-warps by increasing camera speed or decreasing frame rate. I was also able to illustrate to Eben, McKinney and Sherwin-Williams the potential quality of different shot elements so we could more quickly move on to new shots. The speed of the workflow, from camera to dit to Flame to Eben was a game changer. In the end we were able to make up time to shoot different color combinations to create a unique second spot.
By the time we got to post we all knew we had something special. Me, Mario Caserta, and John Boudin pushed each shot to be its best. Alexis Jo and Sang Lee helped with some very difficult roto, tracking and stabilizing. The only CG in the spot is the product! The opening shots are actually very macro, but aesthetically we were going for a bright white version of outer space, like colossal comets colliding. Then the second section references natural valley landscapes as its motivation, airy clouds, weighty structures, followed by the feeling of riding up and through a rich vortex to the product.
We had a great working relationship with the team at McKinney. They came to our office in NYC a couple of times, even braving a city closing blizzard to push this project forward. It was a great feeling to have a collective vision for the spot but to also have the freedom to run with creative ideas and the trust of the agency and client that the work we were doing was all going toward a more vivid and beautiful product. I look forward to working with this team again.
Golden Wolf teamed up with ITV Creative to develop this energetic live action/animation promo for ITV’s coverage of their Rugby World Cup. Using the aesthetics of anime and 16bit gaming, Golden Wolf creates beautiful imagery that blurs the line between the physical and animated.