We're big fans of Brighton-based animation (opens in new tab) studio Persistent Peril at Creative Bloq. And the ad above is a great example of how they can take something that's essentially pretty mundane - in this case, a laundry detergent - and create something vibrant, colourful and enticing.
"We were approached by Israeli production studio Aniboom (opens in new tab) after they saw our music promo Fight For Everyone (opens in new tab)," explains the producer on the project, Sam Bourner. "They thought that our style was exactly what Saatchi & Saatchi NY (opens in new tab) were looking for in their ad campaign for Tide Pods. Our aim was to bring Tide Pods to life in these colourful 15 second spots.
"From the strong scripts and boards we received from Saatchi & Saatchi NY, and using Tide’s bold visual identity, we crafted these 2D spots from illustration to animation - putting the mighty Tide Pod through its paces by flipping, squashing and stretching them in every which direction."
Creative director Garth Jones takes up the story. “We knew that the client wanted a strong 2D style," he says. "So we started by limiting the colour palette to a handful of colours and working from Tide’s bold visual identity.
"As the spots focused on playful transitions between the scenes, when it came to creating animatics we tended to roughly animate the entire spot rather than time out boards, as it was really important to convey the style of the animation and how the elements would come together.
"The idea was to move the items in 3D space but to land in strong 2D poses to keep things illustrative and flat.”
Cleaning up
Two spots have aired so far in the US and Canada, entitled Cleaning Scale and Active Ingredients (shown above) and a further five spots have been made, including versions in Spanish and French Canadian.
Update: As of 27 May, four more spots have gone live on Vimeo - you can check them out here (opens in new tab)
The preliminary sketches below offer a fascinating insight how the animation was developed (click on the image to see a larger version).
Have you seen a great example of animation in advertising? Let us know in the comments!
