Meraas. Design Quarter ft. Steven Harrington
Embark on a breathtaking voyage into Steven Harrington's realm, a boundless world of unrivaled creativity where rules surrender to boundless imagination.
Imagination manifested
as moving pixels.
Samsung - Team Green
We’re always looking for cool ways to bring awareness to important issues, so when Bloomberg and Samsung came to us about building a new Team to promote a greener Earth, we were immediately onboard.
Launched in a series of videos, this new Team Green would explain the importance of using new technologies to make our planet a greener, better place to live.
Design Kingdom of Something
Animation Kingdom of Something, Mimic, Jessica Rowden
Agency Samsung, Bloomberg
Music Combustion Studio, Konsonant
1. The Concept
The challenge was to bring together a team of characters that felt cohesive, but still different enough to represent a wide range of things and people. We chose to have each character in a different style, alongside a real 3D world with 2D elements mixed in.
Willow, our rabbit character, went through a lot of changes, originally starting out as a human girl, then going through different animals, before finally landing on an arctic hare to represent climate activism.
Beta, our not-so-human humanoid, also went through multiple versions. We wanted to make sure that many different materials were included in their body, while still feeling like a living being.
Jacques was always an animal, but which animal represented his cause (the ocean) best? We tried an otter, a capybara, and even a whale, before landing on a stork, so that he could keep watch from high above.
Robbie, our robot, was a tough one. How do you make a robot feel organic and plant-like while still being cute? In the end, the solution was to give him a little plant of his own to care for.
2. The Enviroment
Our environments had to feel like real places that 2D characters also lived. We used a combination of techniques to make this happen, things like 3D modeling, stock photography, generative art from AI, and illustration, as well as actual photographs and videos from the Samsung factories.
For some of the backgrounds, Samsung provided us real footage of their factories, which we then had to design into environments for the characters to exist in.
When working for a tech brand, of course we had to try out the newest tech. We used AI to create some of the backgrounds for the films, manipulating the results to be usable for animation.
3. The Animation
Each of the four characters was animated in a unique way, with a new process for each video. This made it a little more challenging, but the result was worth it.
For the final result, we used After Effects to bring all of the elements together, compositing all of it into a cohesive scene. This included 3d modeling and animation, 2d Illustrations, and extensive lighting and stylization in After Effects.
