Vetor Zero/Lobo Trans'Scribe' To Screen

Vetor Zero/Lobo Trans'Scribe' To Screen

It's pretty safe to assume that when a traditional campaign is launched, the barnstorming TV creative forms the central focus of attention, with outdoor, print and digital supporting the spot with connected stills and content. However, for Mexican paper and notebook company Scribe, the process has been a little different, with their brand new TV spot being influenced by an impressive (and award-winning) billboard.


Created by illustrator Cecilia Beaven, the 'ScribeBillboard' was a fascinating and well-received experiment from La Doblevida in which the artist lived and worked within a huge white canvas billboard. With ideas springboarding from Twitter, Beaven slowly filled the structure with colourful characters and vibrant images over the space of 10 days, her progress being followed on social networks, a blog, webisodes and live streams. With impacts on Twitter hitting over 100 million, 12,000 drawings requested, and a shedload of positive press, it's hardly surprising that a follow up was needed.

Cue Vetor Zero/Lobo. Tasked with transforming the images daubed on the billboard into a 60'' film, the Mexican production company set about enlivening the static images of, amongst others, a rabbit DJ or a taxi driver Pegasus. The result, 'Billboard', is an excitingly heady mix of adorable oddities and lively music, continuing the brand's existing goodwill and existing as an utterly charming spot unto itself.

We spoke to directors Gabriel Nobrega and duo Birdo and the executive producer Luiz Carlos Reis, from the Vetor Zero/Lobo about the process of putting the outdoor event onto an indoor device.

What was requested by the client? Were there any stipulations you had to follow?

The agency La Doblevida was great at making us feel comfortable to create anything we wanted for the film, as long as we followed two guidelines: we needed to show how Scribe universe could work based on the existing art and every character on the billboard had to appear on screen!

We knew we wanted to tell some sort of a story and that it would be cool to give some of these characters specific actions to match their designs. The challenge was, how could a story make sense with that many characters and more importantly, how could we make it work within just one minute? That's when we had the idea for a party, where everyone could be enjoying the music, interacting in a lot of cool ways and, most of all, having a good time in this crazy Scribe universe.

What was the process in converting the still images to animation? How long did the film take to create?

From a technical point of view the biggest challenge was to give volume and facial expressions to the billboard characters without losing their original appeal. Luckily we have a lot of experience animating a wide range of illustration styles and we have learned which graphic solutions work best under each design. The whole process from the script to the final piece took two months.

Was it tough taking Cecilia Beaven's artwork rather than conceptualising the characters yourselves?

Not at all, that was the best part of the work. Cecilia's designs are so warm and full of possibilities that we had a lot of fun working with them.

How many characters did you have to incorporate? How did you decide upon their movements / behaviour? Do you have any particular favourites?

We have incorporated over 50 characters, that is virtually all of the billboard characters minus a couple of them that could have had problems on screen. We knew that we would need to show a lot of characters on screen at once, so we decided to go with the 'party of ideas' concept. The next step was looking at the designs and imagining how each character could interact with the others. We created little 'party situations' and grouped the characters around those based on their characteristics. Some of them could be relaxing in a lounge, others eating in a bar/restaurant, going crazy on the dancefloor and even enjoying their own pool party. From that point it was easier to create specific actions for each of them, making sure they would interact in funny ways. A lot of ideas were added in the storyboarding stage too and some even in the animation stage. We really like the crazier animation loops, especially in the dancing actions!

Did you have any other influences for the animation of the characters? We sensed a Merrie Melodies vibe.

Merrie Melodies is definitely an influence, we grew up with those and it's so hard to avoid thinking of them when animating cartoon characters! But maybe what we were trying to achieve with the animation was to translate the creative process that Cecilia originally had when painting the billboard. A lot of the animation was created in a linear fashion and we were careful not to spoil the expressiveness of the billboard with an over produced character animation. In a sense I think we approached this project with an indie-filmmaker heart.

Can you see any other films working with this collection of characters? Would you like to do one focussing on any particular?

We could develop a whole animated series with this family of characters! I'd love to work on a story about a failed astronaut that crashes on the South Pole believing that he is on a new planet and that the penguins are strange aliens... which they sort of are, really!

What's up next for you?

As Birdo, we are currently working on a short film that mixes live action backgrounds with 2D animated characters, on a super special character design project and will soon go into a pre-production of our first animated series. We are also always open to commercial projects in any format.

Gabriel Nobrega is also involved in the production of content projects such as animated series. He also maintains a deep interest in directing a feature film.

Posted on 12th September 2013