Hinge Digital Takes Flight with Carrington
The Portland animation and effects studio gets to stretch its wings with an integrated campaign that includes TV spots, icons, out of home and more.
Hinge Digital Takes Flight with Carrington
College's Forest Creatures
The Portland animation and VFX studio collaborates with agency BVK to
deliver an integrated ad campaign that features original character design.
It's the holy grail of animators and designers everywhere – to get a chance to extend their talent beyond one genre and create characters and narratives that have legs. Or in this case, wings.
The Portland animation studio Hinge Digital has been doing just that with a broad-based, integrated campaign they've produced for Milwaukee ad agency BVK and its client, Carrington College. The integrated campaign includes two animated and live-action broadcast spots, as well as three online outtakes, 24 print ads, plush toys and more, which all showcase original character designs by Hinge's team of artists.
"Carrington College Squirrel," an all animated piece, broke earlier this year and introduced the school's new bird mascots, "Goldie" and "Blue." In this first spot, the two birds encourage a timid squirrel to take a leap of faith. It was followed up by a second spot, "Bus," that integrated the CG-animated birds with live action.
Under the direction of Hinge Digital director Alex Tysowsky, a 30-person crew delivered multiple pieces of the campaign from concepting and storyboarding to character design and modeling, animation, VFX, editing and more - all within less than three months. The team faced a number of complex animation challenges throughout, especially in making the characters stand out without dialog and adapting design elements to ensure they would work across all facets of the campaign.
"The first spot introduces 'Goldie' and 'Blue' without any dialog, so our animation really had to drive the story," says Tysowsky. "The success of the entire campaign hinged on our ability to visually convey the story through our animation on this first spot. On top of that, we had to carefully design the characters to work graphically across multiple platforms: TV, twitter, pens, plush animals, billboards."
Hinge launched in the summer of 2009, founded by EP Roland Gauthier, VFX Supervisor Michael Kuehn and Tysowsky. The studio's key players represent over six decades of combined experience in creating and producing photo-real CG and character animation at such studios including Walt Disney Feature Animation, Sony Imageworks and Laika Entertainment. The studio has worked for a wide range of agencies and brands, producing commercial campaigns and interactive projects for Nike, Carfax, Activision, Cox Communications, MinuteMaid, The UPS Store, Microsoft, EA and Merck, working with such agencies as 72andSunny, Doner, Zimmerman Advertising and DraftFCB.
Gauthier says the studio went through an extensive bidding process to land the Carrington campaign. "We provided a variety of character design ideas, rough storyboards, and style and character references to prove to the client that we understood the brief and the intention of the campaign," he tells SourceEcreative, "and that we had the creative chops to pull it off. They were impressed with what we delivered, and enjoyed the personal touch we added to the bid process."
"The creative process on this project ran very smoothly," adds Kuehn. "BVK came up with the initial concept but gave us the freedom to design these characters and bring them to life in an interesting way that would translate across the campaign; it was pure magic. When you run through dailies with a client and receive a genuine positive, passionate reaction to the characters you've worked so hard to create, that's a great feeling."
Art Director Ryan Smith from BVK is in agreement. "Hinge Digital offered the right mix of creative talent, artistry and technology that this sort of campaign required," he offers. "They were there for us throughout the entire creative process and played an integral role in developing loveable, believable characters that carry this campaign."
Tysowsky says the scope of campaign called on Hinge to deliver on every aspect from concept through completion. "We designed, developed and created the characters and environments, storyboarded and edited the animatics and participated in the voice casting and the music composition process," he notes. "In partnership with Portland Director Devon Lyon at Lyon Films, we produced the live action for the 'Bus' spot as well."
The brief from Carrington – a private college that specializes in training students for careers in health care, it has ten campuses scattered in a range of Western states in the US – was to create a campaign that could reach across demographic lines, Kuehn explains. "Todd Hanle, the head of Brand Marketing at Carrington, was clear that he wanted the characters to be very relatable to adults while still having lots of engaging and memorable qualities," he explains. "We were given an extensive document examining the personalities of 'Goldie' and 'Blue,' with references to film and TV characters. They were designed to be wise and wisecracking friends and colleagues, and entertaining career coaches to potential Carrington students."
In terms of integration, the Carrington campaign was a great opportunity for the studio to show what it could do across a range of deliverables. "In collaboration with BVK's Executive Producer, Terri Burmester, we orchestrated many elements of the production," Gauthier notes. "As a full service mixed media company, we can provide support for all aspects of a production in a variety of styles."
Gauthier believes the Carrington work helps further credential Hinge Digital as a top player in the animation, character design and VFX market. "We think this solidifies us as a company that can deliver memorable brand characters, impeccable integration with live action, full production services and a happy client experience, with the bonus of some pretty spectacular local Portland beer sampling to boot," he says.
To view the Carrington 'outtakes' spots, click here. For more on Hinge's work on the campaign, along with a sampler of character designs, visit their project page here.
Carrington College Credits:
Agency: BVK
Art Director: Ryan Smith
Copywriter: Seth Gordon
Creative Director: Gary Mueller
Executive Producer: Terri Burmester
Animation/Visual Effects/Post: Hinge Digital
Director: Alex Tysowsky
VFX Supervisor: Michael Kuehn
Producer: Laura Schultz
Executive Producer: Roland Gauthier
Editor: JD Dawson
Comp Supervisor: J Bills
Lighting Supervisor: Frank Ritlop
Live Action Director: Devon Lyon, Lyon Films
Live Action DP: Bryce Fortner
Published 20 December, 2012
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