:weareom: Alpha Bank

The lads at Romanian studio :weareom: put in some long, tedious hours working on this spot for Alpha Bank. With only a few exceptions (the car in the first scene, the birds in the second scene, and the smoke in the last scene) the main body of the animation was created with Legos and stop-motion.

Some technical bits from :weareom:

The project took a couple of days to conceive, five days of testing and calculation, and five days of animation. Post production and composition took a week.

The testing and calculation period was crucial as we wanted to animate at 25 fps to get a very smooth animation, and so we had to know exactly how many lego pieces to add per frame. We also drew velocity graphs so that we had acceleration in our animation.

We also wanted to emulate the idea of time-lapse, which meant designing and building a custom light rig that mirrored the sun’s movement over a 12 hour period. The spinning on each de-construction was acheived by doing the entire animation on a spinning platform, again custom built.

It’s encouraging to see motion designers thinking across media. The Old Guard may find other things to complain about, but there’s a clear love of hybrid processes in contemporary motion graphics. The computer is increasingly seen as just one tool in an expanding tool-chest. That truism alone does not make for quality work, but it does point to a growing comfort with technology as a transparent means to an end, rather than an end in itself.

Watch the spot | View production photos (PDF)

Credits:
Design, Animation and Post Production by :weareom:
Sound and Composition by Studioset, Romania
Produced by Base, Romania
Agency: DDB Romania
Client: Alpha Bank