Third and final part of the trilogy on the Asian cinematographic universe, created for the opening titles of the Udine Far East Film Festival by Nerdo Studio.
The 80’s and the 90’s might be remembered as the nostalgic quote unquote simpler time of Super Nintendo, b-ball and fresh kicks, but in fact they were oh so much more. When we think about it, it’s those iconic generations that brought us to our current artistic and creative market, one of applied artistic skills and ideas, of different styles and paths in life. Our world has never been bigger and we can thank the adventurous “creative industry generation” of the 80’s and 90’s for that.
Inspired by this journey, Le Cube and Final Frontier brings us their new film created as opening titles for the equally cool Ciclope Festival. The event took place in Berlin in November 5 & 6 and Le Cube had the double honor of being chosen Animation Company of the Year by the festival’s jury.
The film talks about growing up as part of that generation, something of a coming of age story of us all, translated into relatable characters that are perfect to project our own collective past — specially if you had the pleasure of growing up skateboarding, barely able to wait for the time to get your first tattoo and marking art in any shape of form.
And the moral of this story is simple, like the ending of a good Saturday morning cartoon: our stories shape who we are, just like we shape the life we wanna live.
Conceived by Singapore’s The Secret Little Agency, the campaign was inspired by the nostalgia for classic MTV idents. In an unusually playful and edgy creative approach for a bank, the campaign harnesses the unique style and creativity of individual artista, much like the music channel did back in the 1980’s and 90’s.
To execute the required diversity, we called upon a dream team of directors from our roster, from locations across Europe, North and South America. Covering multiple storytelling genres, each story is told in a different visual aesthetic, with the set united by a tongue-in-cheek tone running throughout.
Peru artist Jaime Alvarez’ created a 3D sci-fi adventure, while Los Angeles-based Ariel Costa brought a variation on his signature 2D cutout style. Buenos Aires’ Gabriel Fermanelli’s cartoon heist, Barcelona crew Niceshit’s food frenzy and Brazilian Daniel Semanas’ noir piece are all rendered in 2D cell animation.
Gustavo Karam, our executive producer, said “our roaster is a carefully curated and diverse selection of world-class, superstar artist that we love, and are our friends. To bring a raft of them together on one project, in which each had the freedom to showcase their own distinct style and personality, across multiple genres is absolutely awesome, kind of like an animation Harlem Globetrotters.”
Mavis Neo, a partner at The Secret Little Agency, said: “We have fond memories of MTV idents which were the original pre-rolls of that time except that they were always superbly crafted and surprising. We wanted the same for the launch of Cheat Sheet, and specifically catered the idea, execution and even amplification of our idea for a student-only audience.
The audio was produced by Singapore production house, Fuse Adventures in Audio.
Focused on our food’s journey before it reaches out tables, the film reminds us that our choices shape the planet’s future after all, how often do we really know where our meals comes from?
Bose is already known for providing sharp and clean sounds for customers who know what they want for their ears. That’s why Niceshit Studio was the perfect pick to direct this clean and elegant film showcasing their new products.
Our new film for Boxing Cat Brewery is a berserk theme-song-cum-opening-credits animated piece about a superhero cat boxer intent on ridding China’s cities of mundane beer, one haymaker at a time.
Titled “First Blood” after the lager, with the slogan “Defeat Ordinary”, the feline protagonist is Louie, a character developed from the original Boxing Cat logo, who patrols the city in search of insipid beers and apathetic civilians.
First Blood rolled out across China last week, appearing on Boxing Cat’s official WeChat, and in live superhero-themed launch parties in Shanghai and Beijing.
R/GA Shanghai ECD Terence Leong and CD Shing Sian Chew, Le Cube director Ralph Karam and Final Frontier EP Chris Colman talk through the project.
Final Frontier’s first major project in Asia was “Year With Uber” with R/GA Singapore, a campaign harnessing Uber user trip data to create location-specific, personalised animated music videos, made up of 5,000 story and song combinations.
It was a major production effort, requiring our sister-studio, Le Cube, to direct and produce 150-seconds of animation to recreate the feeling of being in an Asian street market.
The project set a benchmark for design-driven, short form, 2D animation in Asia and picked up a Digital Craft award at Spikes Asia.
Since we’re often asked how the animation came together, here’s Le Cube director Ralph Karam to take us through the process:
Road To HBL, the interactive, choose-your-own adventure we created with R/GA Shanghai for Nike’s High School Basketball League, set a benchmark for high-end 2D animation in China.
Shortlisted in Digital Craft at Cannes Lions, a Clio Award in Design and selected among the Top 10 APAC Ads of 2018 by Campaign magazine, HBL demonstrated the potential to create game changing work through animation.
It was also an exercise in efficiency, taking just 7-weeks to execute 4-minutes of 2D – a timeframe in which we’d normally expect to produce 1 or 2 minutes (depending on the complexity).
Back To The Stars, directed by Le Cube, is a classic piece of animated storytelling for Ritz-Carlton, Sanya (China).
Saatchi& Saatchi and Team One, the company that manages the Ritz-Carlton’s business globally, approached us about producing the latest film in the hotel chain’s “Let Us Stay With You” series. The story is based on the real-life experiences of a guest staying at the Yalong Bay resort in Sanya, a retired and recently widowed former Russian cosmonaut. The loss of his wife meant he was having trouble enjoying his vacation, despite the idyllic surroundings. After learning of the man’s story, the hotel staff rallied to create various surprises designed to help ease his suffering.
