London-based weareseventeen is best known for lush CG spots and conceptual idents that are often abstract in nature.
That’s why their recent project for The Feel Good Bakery, a charity initiative from Regenerate, had me doing a double-take. Not only is it rendered in a much flatter, 2D style than weareseventeen’s other work, it’s powered by characters. Cute characters, even.
Character design for The Feel Good Bakery
Clearly, this project was a departure from the studio’s comfort zone. Cesar Pelizer, designer and director for the spot, shared some of the process behind it.
Cesar Pelizer, designer and director for The Good Bakery Awareness Film
For me, the priority was not to tackle the story with a typical charity approach —instead, making it more about simply being fun and making people smile as opposed to being overly worthy in its story.
Animation test for the pregnant avocado
Once we decided to do that and agreed on a playful character piece with our client, the whole process was all about having fun with the characters and showing their crazy personalities.
The Feel Good Bakery Animatic
Exploring what each could do, and coming up with funny ways that they would all prepare themselves was half of the fun — be it the bacon sizzling in the sun or the eggs enjoying a turkish bath together, even the cumbersome broccoli trying to get involved but who is yet to make it in to any sandwich.
Wireframe animation of sunbathing bacon
The idea of all these characters coming together was a nice nod to the community spirit at the heart of the charity and everything our client Andy [Smith, co-founder of Regenerate] does.
The piece was originally intended to be completely 2D. We even designed the characters that way to start with, but when we came to bringing to life, doing that in 3D gave us much more ability to do what we really wanted.
The challenge once we’d decided to approach it this way was finding a way to keep the look and feel as we’d originally intended.
Links
Credits
Client: Regenerate UK
Production: weareseventeen
Creative Direction & Design: Cesar Pelizer
3D Animation: Cesar Pelizer
3D Modeling: Cesar Pelizer
Character Design: Cesar Pelizer
Character Development: Kajsa Råsten
3D Texturing: Kajsa Råsten, Adam Brandon
3D Rigging: Jesper Lindborg
3D Cloth Simulation: Joe (Darren) Maker
Compositing: Cesar Pelizer
Music & Sound Design: Tom Fisher
Big thanks to: Doug at Velocity Partners