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We partnered with McCann Health to develop this beautiful and very needed campaign. Supported by Laura Hyde Foundation, First Responders First is an initiative that was set up to support NHS healthcare workers on the UK front line.
We as communicators treasure these opportunities where we can not only explore our creativity and push a visual language but to actually help people. We are very happy to bring to you The Feelings.
Due to intense demands of their job, first responders were already a high risk group for mental health issues, such as depression and PTSD and COVID-19 has only made this situation worse…
The characters and lyrics were created based on interviews to a group of first responders who shared their stories with the McCaan team.
This is something that we love to explore and play with as we feel we get the best out of both techniques.
By Mixing these two worlds you get the beauty of lighting and 3D materials and the use of cameras along with the complete control and freedom of illustrating and animating the characters frame by frame.
When something is too painful to think about, so you feel nothing at all.
When you simply can’t shake off the sadness, and it follows you home.
When you want to feel ok but you can’t quite shake off that uneasy restlessness.
Overwhelming feeling of helplessness and hopelessness because you are continually faced with situations that are beyond your control.
When you notice that the smallest things can send you into a fit of fury…
When the thought of going to work again fills you with a sickening panic.
This film was very much character driven so we put lot of attention and hours on finessing these brilliant cast of seven main characters.
Each of these characters were developed based on several emotional states that were identified at the research stage interviewing a group of first responders. After properly studying all these delicate feelings and after lots of ideas, sketches and brainstorming we ended up with this set of characters, that felt just perfect.
Working with brushes and hand painted textures provided the human and sensitive feel that we needed to tackle such a delicate subject and at the same time it created a beautiful contrast with the CGI environments.
Since we used a set of different brushes for each of the characters and we developed some guidelines and rules that helped the clean up artists and also provided a consistent look throughout the whole film.
A perfect combination between realistic textures and lighting with some bolder, stylised elements.
We felt this output was the perfect fit to go along the 2D, textured characters.
We put special care and attention in the Tissue Box model and its textures since it was one of the main characters, that voice in off that tells you that everything is going to be all right!
Combining and integrating 2D, frame by frame animation with 3D environments and elements is so much fun, and the output is just beautiful.
Here some process from the pencil, rough animation to the final render, hope you enjoy!
We always aim to push as far as we can the interaction between the 2D characters with the tridimensional environments and assets – putting them in direct contact with these elements brings the most out of this mixed media style.
Probably the most important and key stage of every project, at least for us.
Through this process of brainstorming and structure we make all the main decisions that will grow and develop all the way up to the final render.
