Sainsbury's: 150th Anniversary

FML

Client:

Sainsbury's

Agency:

W+K London

Production Company:

Agile Films

Executive Producer:

Myles Payne

Producter:

Cathy Hood

Director:

Noah Harris

Production Designer:

James Hatt

Costume Designer:

Stasya Monastyrska

Creative Animation Studio:

Feed Me Light

Executive Creative Director:

Denis Bodart

Executive Producer:

Ryan Goodwin-Smith

Creative Producer:

Daniela Hornskov-Sun

CG Supervisors:

Tom Flavelle, Luke Gibbard

Editorial Company:

Final Cut

Editor:

James Rosen

VFX Company:

Nineteen Twenty

VFX Producer:

David Keegan

Grade:

Duncan Russell @ Free Folk

Composer:

Alex Baranowski

Mix Company:

String and Tins

Sound Design & Mix:

Jim Stewart

Character Design:

James Castillo

Additional Character Work:

Julien Becquer, Dan Lambert

2D Animation:

Julien Becquer

3D Animation:

Julien Becquer, Florian Mounie, Marylou Mao

Character Sculpts:

Tom Flavelle, Frederik Storm, Emiel Strijker

CG Generalists:

Denis Bodart, Olivier Pirard, Oguz Birgoren,
Victori Jalabert, Mark Mullan

VR Previsualization:

Alice Janne

3D Printers:

Digits2Widgets

– Print Campaign
Texturing / Rendering:

Oguz Birgoren, Mark Mullan

Retouch:

Denis Bodart, Mark Mullan

Post-Production:

Stanley’s Post

THE BRIEF

It was one of those phone calls. You know, the kind where your friend says “Hey man, I’m building a giant cake that needs to spin at 80rpm and showcase 150 years of Sainsbury’s history. And I need your help! Oh, and we also need to design and animate 14 unique characters, too. K bye.”

I suppose you could say that’s a phone call we’ve been waiting for our whole lives.

Thus began our collaboration with Noah Harris, master of mixed-media storytelling, in his ambitious and touching celebration of Sainsbury’s century-and-a-half legacy. We’re very proud of our work with Noah, his amazing production company Agile Films, as well as Wieden+Kennedy, London, who were an absolute dream to work with.

Cake Place
Cake Light Up
Mr S Emiel
Bean Lady Dive
Mr S Crate

A ZOETROPE?

Exactly. As in, a super early animation experiment that simulates motion from a series of still images. You’ve probably seen those B&W Muybridge motion studies. Ground-breaking stuff, folks.

For the etymologists out there: from the Greek (obvi) zoe = life, tropos = turning.

Muybridge race horse animated
Runners
Sainbury Lineup 04
All char lineup 2 00000
Image43
Image6

THE CHARACTERS

Speaking of ground-breaking, that’s where the Sainsbury’s story begins, too. It all started when John James and Mary Ann decided to make butter. Clean and safe butter, without families worrying about getting sick. Legends.

We used period photographs as reference, but the Edwardian style for portrait photography was… a little stiff. So it was really helpful that W+K chose to highlight this origin story moment for Sainsbury’s. It gave us this cool point in history to begin our enormous design challenge. Keep in mind that everything needed to appear as if crafted from icing sugar! It’s going on a cake, after all.

We started with 2D pencil explorations beginning with Mr Sainsbury. Here you can see some interesting ideas that led us to the final designs.

Additional characters like the disabled child and his best friend, the Comic Relief Bean lady and the WW1 soldiers each represent other pivotal moments for the company. Some are even based on real-life employees. You can see them in the full ad.

SAINTSBURY 04
Image1
Mr S Concepts

THE ANIMATION

HAND ANIM PLANTING SEED V2
WHEELCHAIR KID ANIMDOG V2
Soldier2 D
SAINTSBURY ANIM 2 D NEW V6 temp
3d47c17299e36382
Kids v002 fs

THE CAKE IN VR

This cake is massive. Seriously, it measures over a metre wide and stands about 1.5 metres tall. And yeah, it spins at 80 rpm. So cool.

If you ever get a chance to design something with Noah Harris, do it! He had this amazing ideas and reference for what he wanted.

Initially, we didn’t set out to create a VR version. But it soon became obvious this would be the only way to truly understand how all these moving parts come together. Nine layers with fourteen characters animating independently. The production designers, set builders, 3D printers, agency, client, our animators… basically everyone involved used our pre-visualisation to make important decisions affecting their own process.

All the animation began in 2D. We are really fast at this and used it to gain consensus across a lot of departments. We overlapped this with 3D modelling and good-old-fashioned R&D. Every new character, every animation pass - even new ideas would work their way to the cake after sign off.

Quite quickly Noah, Wieden+Kennedy and the Sainsbury’s clients themselves began commenting on the cake in VR. Each visit to our studio started and ended with a virtual spin around the cake. The irony wasn’t lost that a project celebrating so much history was made achievable in no small way by bleeding edge technology.

VR Demo 01
VR Cake 01b
VR Cake 03
VR Cake 02
VR Demo 04

PRINT CAMPAIGN

LF011301008201 13052019 SB692174 2 a
Sainsburys 060519 174137 462014 M19 1 AL 1
H46 A1406
2b2bb288953633 5de6a93c67d87
510a2e88953633 5dea572d8eec3
A13dca88953633 5dea572d8fa47
0bae8288953633 5dea572d90221