Client: Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative (OBRC)
Agency: Cappelli Miles
Role: Creative, Direction, Production
Date: Winter 2018
THE PITCH
I had an opportunity to direct a campaign for new Refillable Bottles as a part of a recycling initiative being put forth by Oregon’s primary recycling cooperative, OBRC. Instead of recycling bottles, they would be processed at a plant that would wash and then refill bottles instead of breaking them down into pieces and remaking them. It’s a big win for the environment. In the creative pitch, I had the idea of a very stylistic, animated piece that followed a hero bottle from being purchased for a party, to being washed and cleaned, and then enjoyed at another party, all done in the style of “Monnaie de Paris,” a beautiful commercial series promoting travel to France.
The client pitch document I created for the spot
The approved 30s script
PRODUCTION
After the spot was approved, it was time for production. I directed an international team to create the spot, which involved a lot of moving parts. We decided to produce the entire spot in 3D, developing a custom shader that created a “pencil sketch” effect on our 3D geometry and shadows. Then our team of artists responsible for character design and storyboarding then went through and painted frame-by-frame over our 3D characters, giving them the frentic, stylized sketch effect that I was looking for.
The key art we created for one of the girls in the party, holding a Refill Bottle.
Initial development
Working through the flow of the spot and the characters within it
The animatic stage was very important for both our artists and production timeline. We needed to lock animation as soon as possible so our 2D artists could begin the process of sketching over each character. We used a 3D environment to make the big camera movements I wanted to do possible. This early mockup allowed me to also plan out the transitions, allowing me to use the characters to hide our movements from store to party to factory to the final party.
We had to work through our shading process, trying to consider what would constitute a highlight or shadow color, and how messy we wanted each character to be.
A view of the interface showing the animation keyframes and camera setup. Each scene was profoundly simple by design.
PROGRESSION REEL
The progression reel showing the process from the initial script, to the storyboard, the rough animatic, the final nonshaded animatic, and the process to final shading.